Romeo and Juliet - The Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Shakespeare Theatre Company has taken a boldly unconventional - and at the same time deeply traditional approach in their latest staging of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The entire cast of the play centering around the tragedy that befalls two young lovers consists of men.

Of course, in Shakespeare's time, all of his plays were staged with all-male casts. Women were forbidden by law to tread the boards. So, in a way, this performance is going back to the roots of the drama - the language. After all, Shakespeare couldn't rely on the audience to simply buy pipsqueak boys in petticoats falling in love. So he had to convince the audience and the actors through the beauty of the language itself. And in Romeo and Juliet, we see a deep intertwining of the characters. They speak in sonnets - finishing each others verses and rhymes. Even the language shows that these two clearly belong together. With language that powerful, the gender of the actors shouldn't matter, should it?

Or rather, does it? For me, it worked. I loved it, and I'm not even a big fan of R&J. A great deal of the play was considerably funnier with men playing the women. Especially during the first act, the Nurse and Lady Capulet are definitely playing for laughs - even without being campy (which they weren't) there's a lot of humor to be had with gender-bending of that sort. And when the two young lovers dance and laugh and sigh, the rest really didn't matter.

James Davis, who played Juliet, never overdid it. He stamped his feet and twirled his hair and bounced up and down, and generally made it clearer than most productions that Juliet really is 14. She is headstrong and impetuous and completely, happily dazed-in-love. And so is Romeo. My favorite part of the show was when Romeo planted himself below the balcony and gazed up at his beloved with a soppy huge grin on his face that was just completely teenaged.

These lovers are very young and very naive, and their love places them in danger in a society so obsessed with masculine egos in violent overdrive to perpetuate a blood-feud the origins of which are long-forgotten. The message in this production goes much beyond the giddy headiness and overweening young love, it focuses instead on exposing the true tragedy behind Romeo and Juliet, war-mongering and unreasoning hatred and its effects on the young and brash.

For some interesting articles about Romeo and Juliet and all-male casting, check the theater's website:

http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/plays/articles.aspx?&id=671