Romeo and Juliet
Canadian Stage: Shakespeare in High Park
the national post

This year's Dream in High Park is set in an Italian railway station: an airy, attractive structure that, for once, sets off the surrounding parkland instead of obliterating it. The deal, as far as I could follow it, is that a bunch of actors are persuaded to perform a play while waiting for their connection. In the words, more or less, of Kiss Me, Kate: A troupe of strolling players are they, and I wouldn't be surprised if they'd opened in Venice.

Certainly, they're now playing Verona; and since that's their current station, in life and in art, the play they just happen to have on tap, in their memories and their costume-hamper, is Romeo and Juliet. They play it in English, but since the travel announcements by which they are occasionally interrupted are still in Italian, their unseen fellow passengers must be mystified.

The show these buskers do right there is rough, uneven, occasionally piercingly good, and very fast. In Vikki Anderson's production, the famous "two hours' traffic", still mentioned in the prologue, comes out at a brisk 90 minutes -- though, of course, the line may now refer to the unpredictability of Italian trains. The text has been cut to the bone, but I can't say I minded; in fact, and especially on an unseasonably cold first night, I was grateful.

The play still makes perfect sense. It makes especial sense here with the young lovers themselves, who take the time-honoured truth that she quickly matures and he almost doesn't, and make it fresh. Jeff Irving's Romeo is a passionate sulker, whose moods, sincerely felt, take him through masochistic infatuation, real love, a vengeful duel and suicide. He's unsparingly good in his tantrums after banishment, when Romeo, with all the egotism of adolescence, really does believe himself the hardest-done-by guy in the history of the world.

Christine Horne's Juliet starts out cool and a bit mischievous, theoretically willing to consider an arranged marriage; and in the balcony scene, which both actors play with a delightful blend of passion and laughter, she remains in intelligent control of the situation. (The station comes equipped with an actual balcony, but it isn't exactly unscalable. In fact, if Romeo weren't such a gentleman, he could run right up the stairs.) Horne can't manage the surrender to Juliet's more desperate extremes, but she does meet the challenge of both her fake death and her real one. This couple does a lot of kissing-- from the ball, where they definitely exceed Renaissance rules for behaviour in public places, all the way to the tomb, where the editing allows her to wake up before he's quite popped off. Friar Lawrence (played by a woman, Caroline Gillis) is unwise to leave them alone before marriage as long as he does.

A scene that's very well done, and that I've barely noticed in other productions, is the one in which Paris (Peter N. Bailey) clumsily flirts with a Juliet who just wants to be left alone with her ghostly father so that he can advise her on how to avoid becoming a ghostly wife. Jamie Robinson's Tybalt is a killer, in every sense, and Ron Kennell a remarkably restrained Nurse, which is disconcerting at first but pays excellent dividends later on. This sober nanny holds back the good news about Romeo's eligibility until the last moment, thereby driving Juliet into a similarly undemonstrative but very effective frenzy; while her equally prosaic advice to go ahead and marry Paris drives, as it should, the last nail into the heroine's innocence. The Nurse's subsequent grief over her charge's supposed end, is equally underplayed and equally effective. Lisa Berry plays the Station Master who inaugurates the action and then takes part in it, notably as a funny servant; the director's concept doesn't make much sense but it's what goes on inside it that's important. I wish them warmth.