Romeo and Juliet

WARNING: The following text may contain spoilers. If you have never seen or read this play, please stop reading this now. How many of you are still with me? I’m guessing that 99.9% of you are still reading this. This is because Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the most popular play in all of human history. It has been translated into more languages than any other play. Given this, why do we still love it?

Because it is the universal love story. We have all been in love. We all remember our first love – a love that reveled in the innocence of youth, before we knew about the tragedies that sometimes lurk where love leads. The love and Romeo and Juliet is physical, intellectual, and spiritual, all knotted into one. Their love is interrupted at its peak, before they have to deal with everyday realities like changing diapers and going to work. This interruption is the key to the beauty of the tragedy.

If we already know how the play ends, why watch it? For the Elizabethans (as well as the Greeks), the joy of tragedy was witnessing the details: the choices of the particular artists involved in the production. In Shakespeare’s time, this play was very popular, and continued to be played in repertoire well after his death. Surely, the majority of the spectators at the time already knew how the play ended.

What is different about the production you are about to see? Unlike many contemporary productions of Shakespeare, I have not changed the original setting:  “In fair Verona, where we lay our scene.” You may or may not notice some “nontraditional” casting choices. To any objections I say, “fie on’t.” I have never seen this show played as a museum piece, performed as they did in Renaissance England, with men in the women’s roles, outdoors during the day, in unedited Old English. Virtually every production of Shakespeare’s plays is already not done “traditionally.”

Perhaps the most radical departure is the cutting of the script. Even this is not much of a departure. It is a living text continually revised. It is not the First Quarto (1597); the Second Quarto (1599), from Shakespeare’s own manuscript; the First Folio (1623), revised after Shakespeare’s death; or the “Modern Version” in which contemporary editors attempted to “remedy the deficiencies” of the original.

“What deficiencies?” Among them, there is the “Rosaline Problem” (as in, who is she?). The unedited ending of the play is confusing, has continuity problems, and plays like a Scooby Doo episode. Do you even remember the second prologue? It is invariably cut. Here, we have attempted to solve these problems, streamlining the play for a contemporary audience. We have eliminated the many declamatory lines, and gone without the supernumerary clowns cluttering the action with derogatory humor. With all of these changes, it is still “the two hours’ traffic of our stage.” We hope you enjoy witnessing this production as much as we have enjoyed preparing it.