GARRISON, NY — A romance and a love story are two different things. In art we are not very good at differentiating.
Take “Romeo and Juliet,” a corpse-filled romantic tragedy that is routinely mistaken for a tale of deepest love, even though the lovers are teenagers who have only just met – people who, despite their savage infatuation, would absolutely fail a quiz about each other’s likes and dislikes, dreams and histories.
They are passionate, for sure; isn’t everyone at that age? But the brash young people in “Romeo and Juliet,” both the title characters and some of their friends, die of their own impetuousness. They are not old enough to know better than to kill each other in anger in the street, or to agree to some ill-advised plan to fake their own death and be buried in a real grave.
Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s staging—which opened Friday night on the new 98-acre riverfront site of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, under the canopy of his trusty tent—presents the tragedy as a love story, with a twist. Romeo and Juliet are played by festival guests Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson, actors who have been married for 38 years and have done 68 previous shows together. On what background appears the central idea of this production wrongly to depend.
“With Kurt and Nance in the title roles,” Upchurch writes in a program note, with an ampersand as the title of her production does, “we can take it for granted that Romeo & Juliet really love each other.”
Even if we could, and I don’t believe we can, that assumption wouldn’t be very helpful for a drama propelled by the urgency of a new desire and yet played here with the languor of a long acquaintance, as if it is guided by Brother Laurence’s admonition to “love moderately.” And so the sparking attraction between Romeo and Juliet ignites not a furious conflagration, but a glowing ember – warmth, not heat.
The flaw isn’t in the chronologically incongruous casting; the audience is sophisticated enough not to look at the ages of the actors. And in a summer when Ian McKellen returns to the title role in ‘Hamlet’, which he last played on stage a year ago, at age 82, other well-seasoned actors would also want to take their chance on Shakespearean youths. to interpret.
Upchurch’s elegant blending of Heather Christian’s ethereal choral music is one of the most enticing features of this production, along with Enver Chakartash’s dazzling patterned costumes. But Upchurch didn’t build a frame or come up with a conceit to back up her age-blind casting. The idea feels forced, not organic – grasping for meaning rather than giving it.
Romeo and Juliet, teenagers still under their parents’ roof, take drastic measures to take control of their lives and future. But the even-tempered Rhoads and Williamson imbue these teens with none of the tidal wave emotions that make them idealistic enough to face their families’ hatred for one another, and careless enough not to dwell on rational thought.
Without that palpable, desperate, cocktail of hormones recklessness, their actions are meaningless. And if we don’t believe the characters, the piece loses its stake and weight. Like when Lady Capulet (a solid Britney Nicole Simpson) urges nearly 14-year-old Juliet to marry her lover Paris, saying, “I was your mother a lot in the years you’re a maid now.” There is passionate potential in that sense about girls and forced motherhood, but in the context of this pale production it just evaporates.
However, Paris (Erin Despanie) is interesting: unusually friendly and thus extremely sympathetic. You feel a little bad for the man as he innocently looks forward to his wedding. And when Kimberly Chatterjee’s alluring brother Laurence fails to reconcile his own honorable goal—ending the antagonism between the Capulets and the Montagues—with his deranged, death fighters, he’s nevertheless one of the more fully inhabited characters.
The tent in which all this takes place, with no more than chairs for a set, is a temporary structure nestled at the foot of a sloping hill. It is to be replaced nearby by a permanent open-air theater designed by Studio Gang, overlooking the Hudson River — the kind of view festival-goers have enjoyed for decades in the former home of Hudson Valley Shakespeare, on the grounds of the neighboring Boscobel House and Gardens. .
That decor is gone for now, but the usual soft sand stage floor is in place, which spectators can be luged over on their way to their seats. Also reassuringly unchanged: the deft use of the landscape outside the tent as a play area. After fatally wounding Romeo’s friend Mercutio (Luis Quintero), Julia’s cousin Tybalt (Zoë Goslin) runs to the hill, where, in dramatic side lighting (by Stacey Derosier), he surveys the damage from a distance. Upchurch does well with such tableaux.
Covid-19 cases in the company delayed the opening night of this “Romeo & Juliet”. Even when it arrived, two actors were wearing face masks on stage. It is impossible to know to what extent the disruption of disease would have thwarted the depth of characterization in this production.
But more time would not have alchemized the central elements that refuse to merge: the on-stage fiction of the devastating romance of Romeo and Juliet, and the off-stage reality of the devoted love of two accomplished actors.
Romeo & Juliet
Until September 18 at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Garrison, NY; hvshakespeare.org. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.