Romeo and Juliet
ShakespeareWorks
The National Post

ShakespeareWorks is an organization, involving some of our best actors, that for the last half-dozen years has been taking Shakespeare workshops into schools. It is not the only group to have done this but it is has, by all accounts, done it very well. It has now moved on to, literally, another stage, and a purpose-built one at that. A platformed playhouse has been erected in Ashbridges Bay Park at the eastern end of the Beaches -- a theatre paid for, built by and named after the Home Depot company. It is, as befits such patronage, an impressive testimonial to the things that can be done with wood.

It has a thrust stage, not unlike the one at Stratford, though where that one bristles with sharp points, this one is rounded off. Behind it is an array of steps and balconies that pays notional tribute to the Elizabethan theatre but also strongly resembles a grand old-fashioned movie house. In place of the screen is a large hole affording a view of Lake Ontario and the cycle path in front of it. I have heard people speak philosophically of open-ended theatre, but this is the first time I have ever sat in one.

In theory, we are getting the best of both worlds -- the shelter of walls and a roof with the grandeur of a natural setting. In practice, I fear we are getting the worst; the structure may well keep out the rain (this couldn't be tested on Friday night) but it doesn't keep out the cold, while our view of the outside world is severely circumscribed. The passing traffic, mechanized or human, doesn't get absorbed into the picture, as it does at the arboreal theatre in Coronation Park; it just distracts.

The stage itself is fine, though this inaugural Romeo and Juliet doesn't do much for or with it. The rearguard action that ShakespeareWorks has been fighting against the erosion of literature in our schools is vital, and the more there is of it the better. But we aren't starved in Toronto for summer productions of Shakespeare alfresco, and though the casting for this show looked, on paper, as if it might outclass the opposition, it hasn't worked out that way.

Anyone coming fresh to the play (which should surely mean much of the target audience) would, I think, be baffled by the first quarter- hour. The prologue has been cut, though "two households both alike in dignity" is an idea that would surely have appealed to the sponsors. The course of the opening brawl is disguised by percussive accompaniment, aimless rampaging, odd little sub-fights and sheer bad speaking.

Later, R.H. Thomson's production does have some good ideas. I liked the rejigging of the text that enables Tybalt to punctuate the ball scene with explosions of wrath rather than spending himself in a single outburst. This mixed-up Capulet kid is portrayed (by Michael Rubenfeld) as a spluttering sociopath who prowls the streets of Verona cracking a bullwhip, and who meets his end when Romeo, in a clear case of poetic justice, garrottes him with it. In the graveyard finale -- the best scene in the show -- the peripheral characters hovering outside the tomb speak in apprehensive whispers, which is both sensible and atmospheric.

But the effective moments remain isolated. They have no afterlife and fit into no coherent rhythm. This is particularly sad as the director seems to be trying to make the separate scenes illuminate one another, sometimes by overlapping them. That's good in theory; in practice it means having Juliet's "gallop apace, you fiery- footed steeds" obscured by the dead bodies being carried off from the previous scene. And when scenes aren't being thus rushed, they are often -- especially in the Capulet household -- agonizingly drawn out.

Proven actors come off mediocre or worse. Sarah Orenstein, after all her fine work at the Shaw Festival, plays a Lady Capulet who initially hints at having been soured by early motherhood but whose later emotions seem to have got snarled up in her veiled headdress, which resembles an ornate hairnet. (The costumes are generally unhappy. When Paris, who is most drably got-up, asks Capulet "what say you to my suit?" you fear the old man will actually tell him.)

John Dolan's elderly competence as Friar Lawrence is welcome under the circumstances, but he does nothing truly interesting until the last scene, when he approaches the drugged Juliet in an obvious state of mortal terror. Lynne Griffin's Nurse is all right, once she gets past an atrociously fussy first scene, though her "marry with the County" speeches are grimly misdirected.

The only truly successful performance, the only one with both fire and logic, is Blair Williams' Mercutio, who infuses good old traditional swagger with a sense of inner anger, lashing himself into a frenzy in his Queen Mab cadenza as if fearful that he might at any moment run out of metaphor.

The title roles have been given to two young performers who have done well in modern plays but are ill- equipped for this one. They are done in at their first encounter by staging that banishes them to the side of the stage while what seem like acres of space remain unoccupied in the centre. They rally for the balcony scene, which is done with a nice blend of playfulness and apprehension, but fall apart thereafter, both individually and as a team.

Allan Hawco's Romeo is the better, though happier fooling around with the boys than with the love stuff. Mary Krohnert's most notable previous role was Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, which may not be the best preparation for long passages of Shakespearean verse. It may even be counterproductive; the pre-miracle Helen threw herself about in frustration at not being able to express herself in words, and Juliet seems to be behaving much the same, waving her arms when language refuses to work for her. She is about the brattiest, worst- tempered Juliet I remember seeing; I suspect there is an intelligent performance going on underneath but it doesn't stand a chance of emerging. She isn't helped by having her potion-speech interrupted by the ghost of Tybalt, an appearance as uncalled-for as any he can have made during his lifetime.

The other juveniles include two pleasant studies in gaucherie: a Peter (Richard Harte) who comes on like Steve Buscemi, and a Benvolio (Ryan Field) who likes to hang backwards down flights of steps, like some kind of urban sloth, a habit that later spreads to all the other junior Montagues.

Audiences are handed a Shakespearean Insult Kit, which may be left over from ShakespeareWorks' educational program. Choice epithets are arranged in two columns of adjectives and one of nouns; we can mix and match as we please. So if I wanted to describe anyone connected with the show as a mammering, clay- brained canker-blossom (I'm not saying I do and I'm not saying I don't), the company would have only itself to blame.