✭✩✩✩✩

by William Shakespeare, directed by Tim Carroll

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

May 27-October 19, 2013

“Monty Python’s R+J”

There’s no point in mincing words.  The current production of Romeo and Juliet is just as bad, but for different reasons, as the last one in 2008.  While the direction has a large part to do with it, what is more depressing is the staggeringly low quality of the acting.  Most university productions of Shakespeare operate on a higher level than this.  Yet, Stratford claims as its mandate “to set the standard for classical theatre in North America.”  On the evidence of this Romeo, let’s hope it doesn’t.

Briton Tim Carroll, director of the current Romeo, directed the highly successful Peter Pan at Stratford in 2010.  Carroll, who has directed at London’s recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre since 1999, is a convert to the notion of “Original Practices”.  This system is an attempt to present Shakespeare’s plays in a manner as close to the way they would have been staged in Shakespeare’s time.  To attempt do this at Stratford requires a number of compromises.  At the Globe, plays were presented during the day on a bare stage with the sun as the only source of light.  At the Festival Carroll stages Romeo on a bare stage and has lighting designer Kevin Fraser keep the house lights up during the entire performance.  His only freedom as a designer is the subtle change he effects in suggesting the movement of the sun from afternoon to sunset.  Oddly, however, Carroll’s idea of Original Practices does not extend to the text since he omits both the famous Prologue about the “star-cross’d lovers” before Act 1 and the Prologue to Act 2.             

The idea on naturalistic acting is a 19th-century invention although attempts to portray life more realistically in the theatre began as early as the 18th century.  In Shakespeare’s time speeches were declaimed directly to the audience as were soliloquies that we now think of as a character’s private musings.  Blocking was done according to set patterns rather than in reflection of specific situations.  Gestures were used as codes to signify particular emotions. 

Original Practices can work on stage.  Toronto’s baroque opera company Opera Atelier has been the main purveyor of their own version of this style since it was founded in 1985 and it has gained a massive popular following because of it.  With highly talented actor/singers, OA’s Artistic Director Marshall Pynkoski has been able to use Original Practices to create tension in performances since the strictures of gesture and movement can actually heighten the emotions the characters express.

The key to this, however, is a cast of highly talented actors.  Without actors who can suggest the conflict of the formalized presentation style with the turmoil of emotions expressed, the effect can appear ludicrous and amateurish.  And that’s exactly what happens with Carroll’s Romeo.  The majority of the present cast is ill-prepared to act Shakespeare at all, much less in the style of Original Practices. 

The most salient failure is newcomer Daniel Brière a Romeo.  Because of poor posture and lack of confident movement, he has absolutely no stage presence even when he’s the only person on it.  His unresonant voice and over-emphatic style mean that he’s unable to brig any nuance to Romeo’s lines.  His two facial gestures are raised eyebrows to show surprise or happiness and lowered brows to show concern.  He is completely unable to express two emotions at once.  When he finds the Apothecary of Mantua at home, he shows such glee that it seems he forgot he’s there to by poison to kill himself.   The combination of his physical and vocal awkwardness means that his Romeo comes off as a goofy nerd rather than a romantic hero.  Why Juliet would fall for someone with so little charisma is a mystery.

Brière’s main virtue is that he is not a bad as some of the other male actors.  As Romeo’s friend Benvolio, Skye Brandon’s performance is appalling.  He puts so much stress on the five beats in Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, that their meaning is completely lost.  Carroll has decided, like many directors, that Paris is a fop.  This is a mistake since “father makes a stupid choice of a son-in-law” (e.g., Molière’s Tartuffe) is a plot device of comedy not tragedy.  Yet, Yared Antoine, with his nasal voice and inability to sound convincing and prissily clad by Carolyn M. Smith in tasselled hose, flowered shoes and ruffed sleeves, looks and sounds like a commedia dell’arte clown. 

Kate Hennig, known for her searing performances, here seems clueless about how to convey the humour of Juliet’s Nurse, one of Shakespeare’s best-known comic creations.  As Friar Laurence, Tom McCamus phones in his performance.  He is so nonchalant when he describes the sequence of events that led to the deaths of the lovers, it is almost comical.  He also seems unable to muster any believable sense of contrition before the Prince.                

Struggling against the dispiriting atmosphere of so many bad performances, three actors manage to shine.  Sara Topham, though she also plays the middle-aged Ruth in Blithe Spirit, is excellent at mimicking the body language and moods of a 13-year-old.  Her line readings are always clear, with her scene before taking Friar Laurence’s sleeping potion capturing the full measure of Juliet’s doubts and fears.  Though she alone cannot conjure up the chemistry lacking between her and Romeo, he she bravely forges ahead as if it were there.

Scott Wentworth is a fine Lord Capulet and brings out a greater sense of cruelty in the character than is usual.  He makes the scene where Capulet condemns Juliet for rejecting Paris give a strong foretaste of Lear’s condemnation of Cordelia.  On the comic side, Mike Nadajewski makes more of the small role of Peter, the Nurse’s servant, than most of the actors do of larger parts.  Carroll encourages the actors not only to speak directly to the audience but to interact with it.  Of all the cast, Nadajewski accomplishes this the most effortlessly and in so doing makes us comfortable with the idea. 

Carroll’s staging itself causes numerous difficulties that only compound the effect of the poor performances.  He overlaps scenes to such a degree that characters from one scene ask where other characters from the previous scene are when the latter are still on stage.  He completely mangles the final tomb scene.  He has Paris enter to strew flowers on Juliet’s tomb when there is none on stage.  Only after Romeo kills Paris does the bier on which Juliet is lying rise up through the trap door where Paris had scattered his flowers.  The top of the bier is wide enough only for one person, so when Romeo goes to embrace Juliet before he drinks poison, he awkwardly has to kneel astride Juliet before he can raise her torso up to him.  Student audiences can be forgiven for finding this hilarious. 

In another awkward move, he then has to hop off Juliet to retrieve his vial of poison while we note that Juliet’s right arm has slid off her chest to stick out straight from her side.  Romeo, being a tidy person and stupidly unaware that she thus cannot be dead, puts her arm back across her chest and then takes his poison and climbs back onto the bier to die.  Friar Laurence’s profoundly indifferent reaction to the deaths of the three young people hardly sets the tone of tragedy, but then, after the Prince (Michael Blake) speaks the final lines of the play, Capulet and Montague (Wayne Best) help the dazed Juliet and Romeo off the bier so it can descend and they can lead the assembled cast in a merry Renaissance dance – a bizarre conclusion with all the comic elements of a Monty Python sketch.

There is, therefore, no reason to see this production of Romeo and Juliet.  This is the Festival’s tenth production in sixty-one seasons so the next will not be far off.  If you are interested in Original Practices, you might as well see you local Shakespeare in the Park, where the Bard is performed outdoors and in natural light as matter of course.  

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (top) Daniel Brière and Sara Topham; (middle) Jonathan Goad, Kate Hennig and Mike Nadajewski.  ©2013 David Hou.