Summary 
Traditional presentation of the romantic tragedy lacks chemistry between Juliet and Romeo, despite both roles being well played. Passionate and memorable supporting performances further expose the weak connection between the young lovers, although the production is somewhat redeemed by its dramatic concluding moments.
Design
Directed by Diana Leblanc. Set by Douglas Paraschuk. Lights by Louise Guinand. Costumes by Dany Lyne. Original music by Andre Gagnon. Sound by Jim Neil.
Cast
Matthew Armstrong (Balthasar), Stephen Bogaert (Tybalt), Xuan Fraser (Benvolio), Roy Lewis (Capulet), Chick Reid (Lady Capulet), Michael Mawson (Montague), Conrad Coates (Prince), Jonathan Crombie (Romeo), Graham Abbey (Paris), Robert Perischini (Peter), Diane D'Aquila (Nurse), Marion Day (Juliet), Geordie Johnson (Mercutio), Benedict Campbell (Friar Laurence).
Analysis
The Stratford Festival's Romeo and Juliet, directed by Diana Leblanc, is a steadfast and straightforward, stolid and steady rendition of the tragic tale. Despite inter-racial casting and being set in the fictional and apparently tropical "Nariva," a verbal anagram for the textual Verona, the production has as its heart the star-crossed affair of the two young lovers.
The stage consists of eight looming, louvred doors and a series of wrought iron railings. A large chandelier suspends over center stage, flanked by white banners. The setting seems tropically hot and humid, with lighting that is appropriately rich and bright in shades of yellow and orange.
Jonathan Crombie, looking thirtyish and doughy pale, portrays Romeo as more mature than the character actually merits. He shines in the athletic rather than the romantic scenes, where his maturity seems to belie his lovesick anguish. In contrast, Marion Day plays a soft-spoken, apparently early-teen Juliet with a suggestion of California valley girl. She seems reflective and confident, and she makes her 1.3 appearance onstage delightfully attempting to restrain a rambunctious hunting hound.
Separately, Crombie and Day are fine, and at times they excel, like Crombie during the 3.1 duel with Tybalt and Day during the 4.2 feigned acceptance of her fate. Together, however, their physicality and performance allow for very little chemistry. One wonders what the mature Crombie would find alluring in such a mousish little girl as Day, and similarly, what the introspective Day would find attractive in the older, lanky Crombie, who is far from a matinee-idol Romeo.
In an attempt to muster what chemistry she can, Leblanc spotlights the two during the Capulet's 1.5 costume ball. As the masque begins, the chandelier lowers and brightens while additional banners unfurl. All the dancers are accompanied by revelers with narrow sticks who beat a rapid, almost tribal rhythm. Interestingly, Juliet shares a brief but tender dance with her father that contrasts with the elegant but ice-cold distance she keeps from her mother. When Romeo approaches Juliet and the soon-to-be-lovers begin to dance, they are spot lit at center stage, and the other dancers become frozen in mid-movement. It is as if Romeo and Juliet have managed to halt time and fate for a brief and wonderful moment before time and fate will conspire to halt their love for each other. Their balcony scene is elegantly star lit, and later, before they are wed, the two walk in gradually diminishing circles around each other and then kiss, a sweetly innocent touch in accordance with teenaged romance.
The production, lacking passionate chemistry between its protagonists, is bolstered by strong supporting performances. In fact, a number of characters are portrayed with such strength and fire that the comparative lifelessness of Romeo and Juliet becomes all the more apparent.
The mercurial Mercutio is played with powerhouse volatility. Mercutio commands the stage during the 1.4 Queen Mab speech and even after the Capulet masque, from which he emerges hung over and in disarray. He struggles to drink and swallow a raw egg and then leans for support - forehead to forehead - against his manservant.
Similarly, the rat-catcher Tybalt is a firebrand, physically agile and quick to temper. He makes a dramatic entrance during the opening scene by dropping from the balcony to a bench below to join the fray against Balthasar. With his forceful arrival, women begin to scream and fruit-baskets topple as a simple taunting escalates to dangerous swordplay.
The Nurse is played as a younger than usual mother-hen type, full of the sincere effusions of devotion that her demure Juliet never seems to truly feel, even for Romeo. At one point, the Nurse bounds across the stage and knee-slides to Juliet, where she washes the maiden's feet then rains kisses upon Juliet's hands. Later, in bliss over Juliet's love for Romeo, she lifts Day like a child into her arms and spins her in circles.
Even the Nurse's manservant, Peter, manages to steal scenes from Romeo and Juliet, as when he tearfully joins the Nurse in the embrace of the newly betrothed Juliet, or earlier, when he painfully seeks Romeo's assistance in delivering invitations to the Capulet ball, but cannot because of obvious illiteracy and a poignant sense of loss as to what to do.
Finally, considerable depth is brought to the sometimes thankless role of Friar Laurence. This Friar manages to be at once both paternal and fraternal, worldly and callow, sometimes giving the lovers sage advice but inadvertently leading them to their doom. He is so complex and convincing that even the Friar's inexplicable 5.3 abandonment of Juliet within the crypt seems entirely within character.
The brightest flashes from Juliet and her Romeo are unfortunately demonstrated when the two are apart. Crombie reaches his peak in his fury at the death of Mercutio. His sudden spasm of violence culminates after he is disarmed by Tybalt but still manages to defend himself, warding off quick blows from Tybalt's two swords with just a scabbard. Later, in 5.1, Leblanc reveals Romeo's desperation and the depths to which he will (finally) sink for Juliet. The setting for the apothecary looks much like a seedy inner-city crack house, surrounded by prostitutes and thieves. Although Romeo would not sink so low as to forgive his new cousin Tybalt for the death of Mercutio, he now freely debases himself by seeking poison within a place of ill repute.
Day's Juliet, with her ill-divining soul, is most convincing not in her juvenile swooning but in her coldly rigid rejection of her family for the sake of Romeo. She appears to be coiled steel in her acceptance of her father's command, uncoils once alone with surprising venom at the Nurse's reversal of opinion ("o most wicked fiend!"), and she accepts Paris' kiss with corpse-like stiffness, then wipes the contact away at first opportunity. The curtains fall and the Nurse begins her cry of horror even as she begins to swallow the poison from Friar Laurence.
The concluding scene provides the production's best and most moving moments, as well it should. The balcony supports split open, tearing asunder the core of Romeo and Juliet's young love, and as death-white curtains drop, Juliet's candle-lit bier emerges from upstage. The hollow echo from a slow drip of water evokes a subterranean aura as Romeo approaches his supposedly deceased love.
Leblanc places more weight on fate and circumstance than on the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets as the reason for the lovers' tragedy. As in the recent and modernized film version of Romeo and Juliet, once Romeo, fortune's fool, has taken the poison and passes the point of no return - but importantly, before he dies - he sees Juliet's arm move as she begins to waken. The powerful sense of tragic loss is electrified with the horror that the tragedy was an unfortunate (pun intended) mistake.
Despite a lack of chemistry between the star-cross'd lovers, this production of Romeo and Juliet still succeeds at times, in part due to supporting performances as well as the potency of the play's dramatic closing moments.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.16, No.1, Winter 1998.