Taking up the burden of a classic with the stature of Romeo and Juliet is a huge task. It’s even ballsier to try to reformulate it to say something new. There’s an enormous inertia to Shakespeare plays: Like a rolling rock, they simply resist a push in any other direction.

This production is classical in nature – a spectacle on a thrust stage full of light, shadow, merriment, festival, death and duels. In entertaining, little is restrained. Party scenes break out in song, banquets break out in dance, and the seasons change with a literal bang of colour as a bushel of fake apples drops with a start.

But where it diverges is in the subtleties of execution. Director Peter Hinton’s introduction tells us that “the two opposing worlds in this play are more than Capulet or Montague, they are the worlds of the ‘young’ and the ‘old.'” Productions of Romeo and Juliet generally treat the world of the older secondary characters as an afterthought. But in this production you could almost say that the heart of the drama beats in the world of the old. It’s almost played as the older generation trying to save the younger from themselves. In return you feel the keen oppression of their world more, and feel a tragedy that’s much more developed and mature.

The world of the old is here played with a vitality and strength you don’t often see. In this show, Friar Lawrence (Marcel Jeannin) is not bumbling, but instead shows up shirtless and strong, as a man of both God and nature. His exhortations to all to embrace love and life thus command real respect. Mercutio (Michael Blake) and Old Capulet (Michael Spencer-Davis) also have standout performances.

But for me the keystone of this play is Karen Robinson’s incandescent performance as the Nurse. To say she stole the show is an understatement. Her every action, every movement, every syllable of her rolling, round, powerful voice, was so powerful and natural that I was transfixed. She was by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, gossipy and profound, and when she exhorts that Juliet marry against her will in order to survive, you could feel the desperate love that drives her to betray her young surrogate daughter’s desires.

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Oct 28, 2010
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=20706