Courtesy of Mary Jane at the ICA, us Tisch in London students got free tickets to see opening night of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Globe on April 23rd. They were groundling passes, which meant standing room underneath the stage, just as it was in Shakespeare's time.
I squeaked in at 7:33 for a 7:30 performance, just in time to miss the announcements about cell phones (just as we would have in Shakespeare's time), and listen to the prologue, which goes something like this:
"Two households both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene;
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured, piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents rage,
Which, but their children's end naught could remove
Is now the two-hours traffic of our stage.
The which, if you, with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."
This just so happens to be the text we have used since freshman year for vocal warm-ups at Adler. Needless to say, lots of us knew it well.
Unfortunately for the production, they didn't exactly adhere to Shakespeare's guideline of "two- hours traffic of our stage." It really was more like "three and a half-hours traffic," and considering most of us agreed following the show we didn't believe at all that Romeo and Juliet truly loved each other, this sent the production as a whole below expectations. I will say there were some remarkably good performances, especially from Mercutio, Benvolio, and Peter the clown, three actors with impeccable comic timing and vocal mastery of the verse even in such a cavernous space. (At times even they were drowned out by boeing 747's passing overhead--just as they would have in Shakespeare's time.)
Juliet was played by a 17 and a half year old British actress who evidently was feeling the pressure of opening night. For the most part, she was believable and poised, except when she dropped and muddled lines in the famous "Gallop apace" speech. Romeo was about 25, but he seemed too in love with the language he spoke to care about any other scene partners. Perhaps this was a character choice, but it wasn't too effective.
In general, this production seemed to perpetuate a stereotype about Brit's acting Shakespeare: that they rely solely on the verse to tell the story. Granted, this is a much better strategy than relying on the implied emotions in the text, as some American actors have been accused of doing, but there were moments (such as Romeo's reaction to his best friend Mercutio's death) that simply didn't work because actors just "said the words," rather than being in the situation. As with most things, the right answer is somewhere in the middle, but it did make for a rather wooden production (no pun intended).
Nothing, however, gets around the fact that this was a packed house at the Globe on a warm April evening in London. Despite the productions flaws, conditions were perfect, and it was a magical experience.
