by Maria V. Kramer
Daily Lobo
With "Romeo and Juliet" showing at the Albuquerque Little Theatre through Feb. 18, director Peter Kierst has taken on a challenge of immense magnitude - the clichÇ factor. Every American high school graduate has read the play at least once and already sacked it for pickup lines.
What can a director do to this play to make it fresh?
The answer is nothing, Kierst said.
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"What happens (when people alter Romeo and Juliet) is that the play gets warped from what it's really about," he said. "Dig into what made this a great play in the first place. It wasn't always old and famous. Let Shakespeare do his share of the work."
Kierst's emphasis on the words of Shakespeare shapes his "Romeo and Juliet" from the beginning. The opening prologue is spoken by a disembodied voice to a bare, red-lit stage. The set is sparse, only a series of circular levels on which the actors seem to float while speaking. Shakespeare's words and the actors' presentation of them must carry the entire play.
The acting is generally low-key and understated, with the enjoyable exception of Samuel McClure Taylor's raunchy Mercutio. While this minimalist style works for some of the play's actors - giving their performances a beautiful poignancy - it does not work for others. Alan Hudson's tranquil Friar Lawrence was lovely. Nathan Simpson's Benvolio, on the other hand, was sadly one-dimensional.
The lead pair did not disappoint. Caitlin Aase gives Juliet all the charming youth and heartbreaking strength you could dream of. The depth and complexity of her performance is amazing - especially considering that she is a high school junior.
Daniel Cornish, instead of playing up Romeo's impetuous nature, portrays him as a rather pensive, melancholy young man. While I felt that Cornish's portrayal of Romeo was somewhat too introspective and that he was a little too old to be realistically cast as the wooer of a teenage girl, I cannot deny his performance was extremely skillful.
With all the emphasis on the importance of the original play, you may be worried that "Romeo and Juliet" will be four hours long. Fear not - quite a bit of the original script has been cut, trimming the play to a mere 2 1/2 hours.
The cuts prune the play to the essentials of the plot, giving it a feeling of driving urgency. It may be my training as an English major, but I missed all those extra lines. Without some of the lighter parts of the script, "Romeo and Juliet" is grim.
Despite these slight problems, it's a forceful production - as it should be. Kierst said the heart of "Romeo and Juliet" is the power of love - a power that transforms lives and struggles with fate itself.
"Romeo and Juliet"
Albuquerque Little Theatre
224 San Pasquale Ave. S.W.
through-Feb. 18
Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.
Sunday, 2 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 8, 8 p.m.
$22
Grade: B+
