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by William Shakespeare, directed by Scott Wentworth

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

June 1-October 21, 2017

“Romeo and Juliet Meet Macbeth”

The Stratford Festival has now presented Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet four times in the 21st century, an average of once every four years.  Mounting the play that frequenting obviates the need for anyone to see it in any given year since they know it will be coming around again soon.  One suspects that the Festival counts rather too much on the play’s popularity to draw audiences rather than on fine productions or acting since the current staging has the dubious distinction of being the Festival’s third abysmal production of the play in a row. 

In 2008 Des McAnuff had a white Romeo and black Juliet but used the casting to say nothing about race relations since the parents of both lovers were in mixed marriages.  In 2013 Tim Carroll used the questionable notion of Original Practices to allow his actors formulate their own interpretations of their roles and thus to sink or swim accordingly.  Now Scott Wentworth, contrary to all expectations, not only imposes a bizarre concept on the play but manages to draw dreadful performances from virtually the entire cast. 

One of the inherent problems of the play is that tragedy does not come about because of any hubris on the part of the main characters but because of a series of accidents.  The opening Chorus tells us:

    From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

    A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;   

    Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

    Do with their death bury their parents' strife.  (Act 1)

The young lovers are “star-cross’d” but their actions are “misadventured piteous overthrows”.  Thus, the Chorus ascribes what happens to the lovers first to Fate, as if determined by the stars, and then to Fortune since their “overthrows”, or attempts to overturn the status quo, are unlucky.  Fate and Fortune are not the same thing – the first predetermined, the second not – a fact that has caused no end of interpretative difficulty in the play.        

The Widows sometimes merely carry in candelabras to light the stage.  When they assume their symbolic function they each carry a globe lit from within surmounted by a cross.  Were the Chorus to have only two women in her retinue, her function would be very much like the one certain directors give the Witches in Macbeth who are made to appear on stage every time one of their prophesies is fulfilled.  From the crosses on their orbs, however, the Widows cannot be witches.  The best interpretation one can give is that they symbolically represent the widows of all those men who have died in the feud between the Montagues and Capulets.  What the glowing orbs mean is anyone’s guess.  Why they keep showing up when the plot takes an important turn (e.g., Romeo’s buying poison) is also a mystery unless Wentworth wants us to see each plot turn as due to Fate even if (as in Romeo’s poison buying) the turn is ascribable to accident (Friar John’s failure to arrive in Mantua in time).  If Fate really determines what happens, then why does Romeo exclaim when he kills Tybalt, “O, I am fortune’s fool!”  (Act 3).

The play opens with the Chorus on the balcony over the stage and the Widows around a coffin, presumably the latest man to die in the feud.  The coffin is later brought out as a bier for the slain Tybalt and remains on stage for the rest of the play serving as Juliet’s bed and then her own bier, thus linking the themes of love and death as Shakespeare does in the text.  Ruining this scheme, however, are the other times the coffin is used merely as a bench.

To link Romeo further to Shakespeare’s later tragedies, Wentworth has those men slain in the action become ghosts.  When Tybalt is slain, the Chorus and her Widows gather round and the Chorus knowingly touches Tybalt’s bloody blouse before she departs.  When Romeo drinks poison in Juliet’s tomb, the bloodied ghost of Tybalt walks past like Banquo in Macbeth as if Romeo dies because of killing Tybalt rather than because of loving Juliet.  When Romeo purchases the poison in Mantua, the Chorus and Widows are there to reveal the bloodied ghosts not only of Tybalt but of Mercutio and Benvolio.  This last is rather odd since Shakespeare nowhere mentions Benvolio’s death. 

As if this were not supernatural influence enough, Wentworth turns the Apothecary of Mantua into what seems a giant white-faced raven spirit with an electronically altered voice such as some director’s use for the ghost of Hamlet’s father.  As we learn later Friar John was not able to reach Romeo in Mantua because of the plague.  This birdlike costume, fantastical as it looks, is like that designed by the doctor Charles de Lorme (1584-1678) and actually worn by plague doctors in the 17th century.  Most of the audience will not know this, of course, and assume, especially with the altered voice, that Fate is intervening in the action yet again.

The question is whether the addition of an active Chorus, Widows, ghosts and a giant raven will convince anyone that Fate rather than a series of misadventures is the cause of the lovers’ death.  Friar Laurence’s long summary of the action at the very end makes it clear that he thinks of what happened as a train of accidents.  Wentworth should also remember that Fate is not necessarily the cause of tragedy in Shakespeare.  In Hamlet, Horatio sums up the action:

    And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

    How these things came about: so shall you hear

    Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

    Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,

    Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

    And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

    Fall'n on the inventors’ heads.  (Act 5)                          

I should think that if Horatio can claim that the events of one of Shakespeare great plays is a series of accidents, Romeo should be seen with Friar Laurence’s similar view as a forerunner of this notion, thus making all the supernatural machinery Wentworth adds both unnecessary and confusing.

Yared, at least, does attempt to bring out the meaning of his lines.  Farb, however, too often seems merely to speaking famous lines without meaning any of them.  Yared does convince us that Romeo is in love with Juliet, but Farb never convinces us that Juliet really believes anything she says including her declarations of love for Romeo.  Why Farb should give such an unengaging performance is a mystery since she was so wonderful as the title character in The Diary of Anne Frank in 2015.  But then that play was in the Avon Theatre and had a different director.

A weak pair of lovers is a major blow to any production of Romeo, but the weakness continues all down the line.  As Benvolio, Jamie Mac blusters as if unaware of what his words mean.  Actors making their Stratford debut like Zlatomir Moldovanski as Tybalt and Gordon Patrick White as Paris also are unable to bring out the meaning of their lines and have problems with voice control besides.

Yet, what is most surprising is that some of the most seasoned actors in the cast can’t make sense of their lines.  Juan Chioran, normally known for his precise diction, throws away all his lines as Escalus in such rapid bursts of shouting that not a word is clear.  Wayne Best makes no sense at all of Friar Laurence’s speech about the nature of herbs – “Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will” – which is central to any understanding of Shakespeare’s view of his characters.  And Best narrates the Friar’s final summary of of the action so clumsily that we almost wonder if we’re supposed to laugh. 

As Mercutio, Evan Buliung is as fantastical and unpredictable as his character is described.  He account of the Queen Mab speech is done not as a set piece but as if it were developing out of imagination at the moment.  Yet, his Mercutio’s interactions with the Nurse become much more rude than humorous and we start to lose sympathy with the character.  Randy Hughson is in a similar position as Capulet.  Wentworth has Hughson make Capulet such a bumbling, mercurial figure, we wonder if Wentworth views him as “comic relief”.  Yet, when Capulet vents his fury on Juliet, Hughson turns to the kind of violent shouting Wentworth seems to encourage where the words go missing.             

     

As Chorus, Sarah Dodd speaks the 28 lines Shakespeare wrote for the character plus the six concluding lines that Wentworth transfers to her from Escalus with wonderful poise and ominous calm as befits Wentworth’s interpretation of the role. 

When Juliet is discovered apparently “dead” from the Friar’s sleeping potion, Wentworth has the Nurse find the vial and hide it later eyeing the Friar as if accusing him of Juliet’s suicide.  Wentworth, unfortunately, also has the Nurse confiscate Juliet’s dagger at the same time so that we have no explanation how Juliet later has her dagger with her when placed in the tomb.  Why would the Nurse give back a dagger to a person she thinks is dead? 

Wentworth and designer Christina Poddubiuk have set the action during the time of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth (1649-1660) although both sides seem to follow the Puritanical dress code of all black clothing with small white ruffs or wide collars.  The problem with this design is that there is no way to tell the Montagues and Capulets apart.  That may, indeed, be Wentworth’s point, but it makes telling who’s who quite difficult.

Wentworth’s project of attempting to reveal Romeo as a tragedy as great as Shakespeare’s later tragedies is a complete failure.  The mere fact that he has to borrow so many tragic accoutrements from other tragedies, especially Macbeth, only proves that these accoutrements are absent in Shakespeare’s original play.  The result is an extremely muddled production distinguished by only one unimpeachable performance from someone in a secondary role. 

If the Festival follows its usual pattern, another Romeo and Juliet should be in the offing in another four years even though public schools rather scandalously have stopped teaching the play.  Three bad productions in a row of the same play is unusual for any classical theatre company.  Let’s hope that Stratford can overcome its misadventures with this play and that the wheel of Fortune will finally turn in its favour.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Antoine Yared as Romeo and Sara Farb as Juliet with a “Widow” watching in foreground;.Jamie Mac as Benvolio and Evan Buliung as Mercutio; Antoine Yared as Romeo and Sara Farb as Juliet; Marion Adler as Lady Capulet, Sara Farb as Juliet and Seana McKenna as the Nurse. ©2017 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.