The youth are f**ked.
Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way.
Emmy Award winner Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”) and Golden Globe Award winner Rachel Zegler (Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) star as Romeo and Juliet in Tony Award-winning director Sam Gold’s (Fun Home, An Enemy of the People) visceral and visionary production. Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy now belongs to a new generation on the edge.
My inner English teacher is grateful to director Sam Gold for drawing a younger crowd (voluntarily, eagerly!) to Shakespeare. The production sometimes thrilled my outer theatergoer too. Sometimes, but not always. There are downsides to Gold’s presenting the tale of star-crossed lovers primarily through youthful energy. This is most apparent after intermission, when the action turns to quiet gravity and grief, and Shakespeare’s words matter more. The cast’s relative lack of stage experience is manifest in a flattening of both the poetry and the tragedy.
Though to be fair, intense over-acting may be for the sake of the crowd, for whom Shakespeare remains a dense and daunting endeavor (“I have soooo much algebra tonight,” said a girl behind me as I exited.) In this play about teens, now vigorously pitched for teens, to Borg or not to Borg may be a pertinent question – and if it serves as an entry to a genuinely refreshing take on the oft-spoken balcony scene, then so be it.
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Broadway Revival Broadway |
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Classic Stage Company Production Off-Broadway |
2016 | West End |
Kenneth Branagh West End Revival West End |
2018 | West End |
RSC Production at the Barbican West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
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