mean?
Each little red star is a clickable link to additional information on whatever listing it appears beside. It might be a link to an article in a local newspaper, or it might be a press release the company has sent me.“Romeo and Juliet”
Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2010
Over at the Cohoes Music Hall, Artistic Director Jim Charles often asked the audience, by show of hands, how many have never been to the Music Hall before. Then he demands of the feeble few with their hands raised: “Well what took you so long? It’s only been here for 136 years!”
I would bet if I asked all of you out there in Internet-land how many of you had never attended a Bakerloo Theatre Project production there would be more than a few hands raised, and even though ten years is nothing in the geological progression of the universe, I would demand of you an explanation for your procrastination. For at least half of that time I have been telling you how good this company is, and how inexpensive their tickets are, and yet there you are, at home watching some so-called reality show or shelling out $50+ for a show at a big-name venue when Bakerloo is working wonders for $16 a seat right in downtown Troy.
The wonder with which they have opened their 2010 season is a fascinating adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet performed in an empty storefront with a cast of ten talented young performers. William Addis, the company’s Artistic Director has directed the production, which, while it is performed in a virtually empty space, found its inspiration in his memories of an adolescence spent in Belleville, New Jersey, which Addis describes as “…a small, blue-collar city in the shadow of New York City…where working-class Italian-Americans were learning to live alongside a growing immigrant population, where class issues were always in the back of people’s minds, and where the greatest city in the world beckoned and threatened.”
It was a great treat for me about a month ago was getting to see Tina Packer play Juliet in a few scenes. Packer is many decades removed from her adolescence, but she proved what we all know, that our teenage selves always lurk inside of us, and, as a great actress, she was able to bring forth her inner Juliet regardless of the difference in their ages. No one will cast Tina Packer as Juliet today, but she included those scenes in her short-form Women of Will presentation – a look at all of Shakepeare’s female characters in the order that he wrote them – both to give herself a chance to channel her inner teen, and to make the point that Juliet was the first of Shakespeare’s women that he himself fully inhabited. She had given examples of how Shakespeare clearly understood, sympathized with, and even loved some of his earlier female characters, but with the creation of Juliet he literally became her. She is his first fully-formed feminine creation. And she is wonderful.
Lily Junker, Bakerloo’s Co-Artistic Director, who plays Juliet here, is a luminous natural beauty, and, while she is certainly 10-15 years older than the 13 year old she is playing, she is at the ideal point in her life and career to bring this fascinating creature to life. Watching her – and you are VERY close to all the actors in this intimate space – there is never a moment you don’t believe she is just a few weeks shy of her 14th birthday.
Peter Martin, her Romeo, a Bakerloo newcomer, while probably younger than Junker, is less successful at hiding his age (I would guess him to be an elderly 22 or so), but Romeo is a few years older than Juliet, and so they work well together.
In channeling his own adolescence, Addis has thrown a lot of testosterone into the mix – as does Shakespeare. Until the central couple are married the play is pretty much all about boys behaving badly – warring over turf and women – and then no sooner have they said their vows than the “rumble” which claims Mercutio and Tybalt’s lives – in exciting fight choreography by Joe Mihalchick – effectively ends any hope of their happiness. Charlie Brown as the garrulous Mercutio, Adam Thomas Smith as the slightly more level-headed Benvolio, Patrick Shaw as the fiery Tybalt, and Abigail Fudor and Becca Landis as the playful Peter and more timid Balthazar mix it up loudly in the early scenes.
Eric Chase, the Company’s Producing Director, is strong as Friar Lawrence and Juliet’s father, Lord Capulet. Addis often makes very interesting choices as he cuts and double casts his productions, and here the most striking moment came when Chase went from playing the good Friar in the scene in which he gives Juliet the potion which will make her appear dead, to playing her father in the scene where she begs his forgiveness for refusing his earlier demand that she marry Paris (Parag Gohel). In the scene with the Friar she is standing up, speaking to him as an equal, but with her father she drops to her knees and “prays his forgiveness.” Chase wears eyeglasses as Friar Lawrence and removes them to become Lord Capulet, but his whole demeanor also changes as he shifts seamlessly from one role to the next.
Bakerloo actors tend to be under 35. Now if you do the math, Juliet is not quite fourteen and Lady Capulet says that she was not much older than that when she gave birth to her. So she is under 30 and her husband is probably not too many years older. No, the only character in Romeo and Juliet that really calls for an older actor is Juliet’s Nurse, and while Lauren Diesch does a nice job, she is too young and doesn’t get the humor that an older woman would bring to the part.
Addis and company have made remarkable use of an empty storefront (provided by Bryce Real Estate Services). More care has been lavished on building risers for the audience and on separating the performance area from the street (and any ambient light and noise thereof) than has been spent on stage lighting, costumes, and scenery combined. Chase has done the lighting design and the instruments he has in place don’t fill the playing space the way traditional theatrical lights do, meaning that there are hollows and shadows, but Addis has his actors work well in and around them. The real difficulty with the space is that is it very acoustically “live,” and when everyone, or anyone, raises their voice in anger, the cacophony and reverberations are tremendous. I did lose some of the words at those moments, but I have seen troublesome acoustics literally destroy a production, which Addis and sound designer Gohal doesn’t allow them to do here.
“…take an empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
- Peter Brook
Addis uses this, my favorite definition of theatre, in his explanation of the company’s choice of an empty, untheatrical space in which to stage their 11th season. Sure, it is cheaper and every theatre in this country is hurting for cash this year, but for Bakerloo the less-is-more philosophy has always been part of their mission.
“We believe that Shakespeare and the great language plays are most vibrant when removed from the trap of a traditional stage and placed in new and unexpected terrain.”
- William Addis, director
Removed from the trap and the trappings of conventional theatre, this Romeo and Juliet becomes all about the text and the actors. There are a few props and costumes, but for long stretches there all that the actors are working with are their own bodies and voices in collaboration. This works incredibly well for such a passionate, intimate play.
“I have a lot of possible entry ways for [“Romeo and Juliet”]: “Rebel without a Cause”, the 1960s girl groups and the Beach Boys – but as a boy from Jersey, I am using Bruce Springsteen’s 1970s music as my starting point. In the Born to Run album, the song “Sandy” in particular, you will hear music about “getting out”, about the explosive nature of first love, about kids running the streets and princesses needing to be saved. This is the play to me.”
- William Addis, director
Okay, so I don’t know my Springsteen, but I liked the music I heard here – much of it sung a cappella by Landis and other members of the cast. I didn’t miss the E Street Band or The Boss. The lyrics and the mood of the songs worked well presented quietly, where they might not have if fully engineered recordings had been played.
Two days prior to seeing this production I had been at Shakspeare & Company where I saw John Douglas Thompson, recently hailed by no less than the New York Times as one of the greatest Shakspearean actors alive today, as King Richard III, surrounded by an all-star cast of Shakespearean heavy-weights in sumptuous 15th century costumes lit by a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of professional stage lights. And it was wonderful. I encourage you to go and see it – it’s running through Labor Day. But my Shakespeare experience at Bakerloo was just as wonderful, and they close on July 22. For God’s sake – GO!
The Bakerloo Theatre Project production of Romeo and Juliet is performed July 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 21 and 22 at 7 p.m. and July 17 at 2 p.m. at 291 River Street in downtown Troy, NY. Tickets are $16 for adults. Wednesday and Thursday performances are Pay-What-You Can. High school students are admitted free with an accompanying adult. $25 for a Season Pass. (PLEASE NOTE: you must CALL SMARTTIX (877-238-5596) to get a season pass!) The show runs just two hours with one intermission and is suitable for ages 13 and up.