Off Road Shakespeare’s (ORS) free outdoor production of Romeo and Juliet makes full use of Red Square’s unintended stages. The ensemble performs the play, and the audience sets the cast! Right at 4 PM, Leah Adcock-Starr, director and artistic executive for ORS, playfully yet skillfully gets audience members to step up to the hat of chance to pick which actors will play every role in the show. One group picks the Capulets family (Juliet’s people), the next group picks the Montagues (Romeo’s kin), and so on until even Romeo and Juliet are picked by random selection. The audience itself picks whether it will be a Capulet or Montague, and this determines which of the stage managers one follows as the scenes move about Red Square. I landed with the Capulets.
This way of casting means that actors had to prepare several roles and come ready for any of them. Quite a challenge, and it also means that no two shows are alike.
There’s not much need for a spoiler alert as Shakespeare gave away the plot in the prologue:
Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The entire ensemble, in their randomly chosen roles for this show, then deliver a roving performance, using stairs, grassy overlooks, sculptures, and even gaps in the venting towers. The production featured a small band and some scenes had a musical sound track! One particular monologue by Juliet was accompanied by low-volume solo trumpet. Nice, nice, touch.
Though there was no program and the roles were picked at random, using the magic of Google search I will hazard identifying a couple of performers. Rudy Roushdi as Nurse kept the company on alert as he would steal every scene he was in if they let him! It’s a good role to bring in much welcomed levity amidst the feuding families and frequent fights.
Lindsay Zae Summers as Juliet was a revelation. Some of the famous scenes finally made sense to me. One could hear in her voice and see in her face every passing emotion: love for Romeo, defiance of her father’s wishes for an arranged marriage, confusion whether the potion given her would only send her into a temporary coma or might actually kill her, grief at the murder of her friends and yet again when she finds Romeo dead by real poison lying beside her. Good job.
There’s no edge to the stage, so get up close. One death scene literally happened right next to me! Even with this, the scenes in the grassy pit by Meany Theater Studio were hard to hear, and the crucial scene of Juliet drinking the potion that knocked her out, for “two hours and forty” was staged between the exhaust towers and hard for everyone to see.
Though Adcock-Starr plans to trim the show to about 75 minutes so it is easier to tour with, this current production ran to 2 hours and 15 minutes, with no intermission. It’s outdoors and all over Red Square in the summer—wear comfortable shoes, bring a hat, shades, sunscreen, and water.
Performance Ensemble: Rudy Roushdi, Corey Lynn Atencio, Adrian Cerrato, Hazel Lozano, Mimi Santos, Lindsay Zae Summers, Celia Forrest, Jonelle Jordan, Kieran Adcock-Starr, Tatiana Pavela, Tamsen Glaser, Wiley Basho Gorn, Lily Warpinski.
Creative Team: Leah Adcock-Starr, Kieran Adcock-Starr, Alyssa Kay, Steven Tran.
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, directed by Leah Adcock-Starr. Runtime: 2 hrs, 15 min., no intermission. U District – UW Campus Red Square. Free. July 8 | 15 | 22 | 29, 4 PM & 7 PM. Closes 7/29.
