Romeo and Juliet scores
19 Jul 2018

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Dahlia Katz

On a hot summer night, the fate of two star-crossed lovers unspooling under the stars is a heady mixture of culture, entertainment, and appreciation for the wonders our fair city has to offer. This Romeo and Juliet is briskly accessible without losing any of the magical cadence's of Shakespeare prose. Set in a vaguely modern setting, the Capulets and Montagues are presented as rival rabid soccer fans. The conflict that exists between the two households of Verona is not only logical but also colour-coded. And the sports metaphor allows for much energy and bounding about the stage.

Frank Cox-O'Connell moves smoothly from actor (Hamlet) to director, guiding an exuberant cast through all the beats of the plot by keeping them in constant motion. A long comic speech by Mercutio that tests modern sensibilities? A shirtless Mac Fyfe delivers it with all the faux-casual bravado of an audition for Guys Gone Wild: 1595 Edition. The tricky prologue that also provides somewhat necessary information? Give it to Benvolio who in the hands of Peter Fernandes (Love and Information, Onegin, King Lear) who is not only the incarnation of the one picked last for a team so the first to come up with a quip, but also has that rare ability to hold attention while dispensing dry information dynamically. The two of them manage to make soccer louts magnetic.

Fyfe crosses paths with Jenny Young's dithering nurse and comic sparks emphasize her sexual frustration, a counterpoint to the title couple. Naomi Wright (Kiss, Julius Caesar, A Room of One's Own) traverses the leap from distracted to grief-stricken, while Jason Cadieux (Love and Information, The Wedding Party, King Lear) is both a benevolent father and a benevolent Father. Jakob Ehman (The Circle, Nature of the Beast, Cockfight, Donors, Firebrand) is a strutting Tybalt, suffused with the confidence and menace of an aspiring athlete or fanatical fan. 

But all of the proceedings depend on the performances of Romeo and Juliet. Rachel Cairns (Bunny, Hamlet) begins as petulant - her Les Miz waif tank top is a signifier of her outsider status, a musical theatre fan among soccer hooligans - and becomes obsessive, her love for Romeo is a creepy, but completely realistic, combination of boy band fandom and sexual desire. David Patrick Flemming, as he did in What a Young Wife Ought to Know, projects desire and desirability with an intensity that focuses on the object of his desire but radiates into the audience. He is also a very physical Romeo as he rock climbs while also declaiming his passion with rhythmic precision.

When Cairns and Flemming lock eyes in the midst of a chaotic party scene and swirling dry ice, somehow the focus remains on the connection between them. Somehow love at first sight seems not only plausible but a fait accompli. However the ill-fated lovers deliver the poetry in a contemporary colloquial style, rendering it crystal clear but also slightly flat. Their physical chemistry - both with each other and with the audience - carries them through, but the death scene is robbed of some of its pathos. The downside of soccer hooligans and dreamy schoolgirls, is that is hard to be too concerned with their fate no matter how tragic, dramatic and metaphorical.

As the curtain call continued to raucous applause, a young couple formerly seated on the grass right in front of the stage, stood and began to make out passionately. Not quite passionately enough to interrupt their videoing of the moment, with the stage and bowing cast in the background, for posterity, or more likely social media. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet? Perhaps. Or so consumed by the dichotomy exposed by this production that they had to add a meta-theatrical layer to the evening? We'll never know unless we stumble across it on YouTube. But young passion, no matter how artfully framed and digitized, can't possibly compare to the live experience of the fate of two star-crossed lovers unspooling under the stars.