Romeo and Juliet, American Shakespeare Center

Two households, fair Verona, star-crossed lovers... it's a story we all know, and one most Americans had to read at some point by the end of high school (or at least watch the movie version of their choice).  Two young people meet, fall in love, and after two hours or so, both of them are dead by their own hands. I can understand the temptation to try and mix things up--the people have seen this before, they know how it ends, why not try and add some spice and put an element of surprise back into the story? The drawback here, of course, is that the story already works like clockwork, and if you choose to reinvent the wheel rather than polish the cogs (the metaphor is straining, but I never claimed to be Shakespeare), the whole thing might fall apart. 

In director K.P. Powell's production of Romeo and Juliet at the American Shakespeare Center, there's a special emphasis on the story itself that stands out among other recent productions I've seen. Powell places Isabel Sanchez as Chorus with a beautifully embossed book in hand, eager to pull us into the world of the story as it begins, and there to take over the final words of the Prince as the story closes. In between, however, Sanchez reappears in the role silently and grows visibly anxious and upset as the street-brawls between Capulets and Montagues turn deadly, and even shuts the book itself in an attempt to forestall disaster. But the inevitable tide of the story carries through to its original conclusion, as it must when the bargain is to tell Shakespeare's version of events. 

One of the best arguments in favor of the lean staging most-favored by the ASC is this ability to let the play speak clearly, supported by the artists working on and off the stage. While there is some indication in the costumes by Elizabeth Wislar to evoke the early 2000s, these elements don't transform any of the fundamental power structures at play or within the characters; if the opening sequence is placed loosely at a Pizza Hut, there's no attempt to explain that the origins of the feud between the Capulets and Montagues is chain-restaurant-based.  

Instead, the focus of the audience is guided towards meeting the characters and letting them take our attention, and allowing the audience to then wrestle with their fates. Nick Ericksen's Romeo has boundless energy that wants to spend itself externalizing the biggest interior emotions he possesses, and when the power structures of the world created by the warring families cause him to try to refit that energy within their fight, Tybalt (Joe Mucciolo) dies. Juliet, here a sober Isabel Lee Roden, exists within a world that defines her through her family and her marriage, so when she attempts to assert her own choice even while staying within that paradigm, she is destroyed under the crushing weight of a second, imposed marriage. It's what's in the text, folks, and it plays out beautifully and tragically here! There are also excellent supporting performances helping to drive the engine of the story in Angela Iannone's Friar Lawrence and Sara Linares' Mercutio and Lady Capulet which bring reason and bolstering energy onto the stage. When you reach the final tableau of young lovers embracing in death as their grieving families finally reconcile, you come away seeing all the cogs and levers and the tragic energy that drives the story laid bare, and you can see why it works. 

Powell's story framework reminds us that we know this story inside and out. We know its highs and its lows and we certainly know how it ends, but it's a story worth telling again, and it's a story worth seeing at the American Shakespeare Center.