At its core, Romeo and Juliet is a cautionary tale of young love. If you kiss a boy at a party one day, marry the next day, and within a week they are both dead. Of Shakespeare’s tragedies, this one is also more propulsive, funny, and more modern than others, a fusion of sex and death, a masquerade that needs little refinement. Cast a few charismatic leads, wind them up and let the corpses fall.
This does not mean that playwrights and directors should not examine and adapt texts. Of course you should. But what is puzzling isRomeo and Julietwill be performed in partnership with the National Asian American Theater Company. Two River Theater It’s about how much that adaptation adds.
Directed by Hansol Chong and Dustin Wills, who recently co-produced “Wolf Play” at Soho Rep, billed as Jung’s “translation of modern poetry”, the production is sporting and lively acting. It’s a work, but I can’t make a compelling case for the film. Includes many renditions and local language interventions. Jung and Wills threw a lot of spaghetti against the “Romeo and Juliet” wall. The result is lots of noodles around.
Usually located at 136 East 13th Street, home of the Classic Stage Company, the set is a wooden circle designed by Jonghyun Georgia Lee and lit by Joey Moro. This, like Mariko Daito’s outfit, which combines a long skirt and slashed doublet with a T-shirt and jeans, represents the Elizabethan era.
Jung’s script follows this same line between early modern and modern times, leaving some parts of the play intact but enriching others with new vocabulary and new jokes. For example, in the first scene, the prologue is delivered almost verbatim, but with an occasional “doth”. But the first line of the dialogue is “I swear, we can’t be a dupe for anyone,” leading to a very dirty pun. (Are those bad puns? Yes, but so are Shakespeare’s.)
Jung’s interpolation, perhaps a refinement of the actual first line, the elaborate play of “Collier” and “Choler,” would have made the peculiarities of acting and staging more telling. And some substitutions, such as replacing “proud” with “excited,” don’t need more. Still, Jung respects Shakespeare’s rhythms and knows enough to match his wordplay, so it’s a pleasure to see her active mind match up with Shakespeare.
From Major Kurda’s sad boy Romeo, to Dorcas Leon’s lover Juliet, to Mia Katibak’s warm and surly nurse, the performances are uniformly strong. (Daniel Liu, who plays the Servant and Lady Capulet, is an actor to watch.) Asian actors don’t always get an equal chance to play classic roles, so this alone justifies the show. Accepted. However, Jung and Wills’ instructions don’t always work for them. Broad and busy, prone to clowning, and has a habit of brazenly telling all sorts of sexual jokes. Brechtian gestures and live loops, Groucho Marx glasses and plastic fish litter the stage, stealing the narrative’s momentum. Tybalt (Rob Kellogg) runs a worm at one point. Tragedy is far away.
But if you were young and had or remembered a great deal of unbridled emotion, then “Romeo and Juliet” doesn’t seem far off. Reflecting language, dance and streetwear in our own times doesn’t bring it any closer.
Romeo and Juliet
Through June 3 at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater in Manhattan. naatco.org. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes.
