Smoke billows across the stage, filtering and dampening beams of blue lighting. Jazz plays in the background. Columns connected by web-like arrangements of rope comprise a minimalistic set. The first players emerge, clad in punky leather vests and combat boots. From early on, the audience knows this is a grim, stifled Verona. The bleak atmosphere permeates, shaping the city’s citizens throughout the play.
“The play is way darker than people really assume it is,” said director Emma Johnson ’14. “The idea of star-crossed lovers and love at first sight is actually kind of terrifying. In going along with their love, Romeo and Juliet are guaranteeing their own suffocation.”
The play adheres to a traditional script, but the subtext behind the lines is explored in an unconventional way. The well-known line, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” is transformed from an innocent exclamation of love to an expression of desperation. “Juliet is thinking that if he weren’t Romeo Montague, if his name were anything else, they could be together,” Johnson said.
“We were striving for a Juliet who was a lot more powerful and fervent than she is usually played,” said Nora Rothman ’13, who played Juliet. She said she added a lot of emotional intensity to the part and wanted to expose Juliet’s non-delicate side.
Jesse Weil ’16, who played Romeo, also said strong, real emotions were key to the production. “It’s real because it’s spontaneous and exciting and overwhelming. I’m at the age when I can relate to a lot of these things, and finding the realism in that novelty makes the acting more grounded.”
Weil said he felt the modernization of the performance helped “lessen the gap between the play’s circumstances and the audience.” But “it was less about modernizing the emotions and more about finding how they resonate with me and recognizing that certain things are timeless,” he added.
“Working with the production team was one of the most fulfilling parts of the process,” Johnson said. “I wanted to modernize the play and create a cohesive atmosphere.”
Rothman said the re-imagination “will excite the audience in a more sensory way.”
During the classic soliloquies, characters are isolated by light and sound, accentuating the intensity of the moment. Beams of light shine upon them from above, or in certain more haunting moments, from below.
The music features a mix of electronic beats and classical overtures. “I used electronic beats to create a kind of ambience and also to guide the rhythm of the lines,” said Ursula Raasted ’14, sound designer of the show. “Then when Romeo and Juliet are together and allowed to be in their own world, there is a transition into more classical music and solo piano.”
Sarah Gage ’15, who played Lady Capulet, also composed the love theme. “The structure of the love theme is that they each have their own individual theme. But the first half of Romeo’s theme and the second half of Juliet’s theme come together to make the love theme,” she said. “They’re two individual people, but when they meet their two parts fit totally and completely and perfectly together.” This blending of disparate melodies creates a feeling of unity and is one of the performance’s strongest points.
The play is dark, but there are moments of humor mixed in. The role of the nurse is an often underrated element of “Romeo and Juliet.” Contributing what may be the performance’s most successful comedic intrusion, Skylar Fox ’15 plays this role in drag. “It’s tough sometimes because the costume is ridiculous,” he said. “But I think the key challenge is to play this part honestly because in this character there’s a lot of humor and a lot of comedy but also a lot of tragedy.”
Though the production runs over three hours with an intermission and would have benefitted from certain cuts, it makes up for its unnecessary length with an unflaggingly energetic cast and an intriguingly dark approach to this classic romance.
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