Summary 
A national touring company production is an involving update to 1920s Verona, set in a West Side Story-like yard behind a gray brick building. The title teenagers are well-played, especially Juliet, but with little chemistry, and the supporting characters range from an exceptional Nurse to a strong Friar to inexplicably enhanced smaller roles. Lush musical scoring, but in need of more danger to the fight scenes and more fire to the romance.
Design
Directed by Penny Metropulos. Costumes by Mathew J. LeFebvre. Set by Neil Patel. Lights by Michael Chybowski. Music composition and direction by Victor Zupanc. Sound by Scott W. Edwards. Fights by Felix Ivanov.
Cast
Jesse Bonnell (Abraham/Friar John), Raymond L. Chapman (Friar Laurence), Laura Esposito (Juliet), Hugh Kennedy (Benvolio), Jason McDowell-Green (Lord Montague), Jamie Smithson (Paris/Gregory), Elizabeth Stahlmann (Nurse), William Sturdivant (Mercutio/Prince), Chris Thorn (Lord Capulet), Myxolydia Tyler (Perrin), Sonny Valicenti (Romeo), Christine Weber (Lady Capulet), Isaac Woofter (Tybalt/Apothecary).
Analysis
A truly collaborative effort: Penny Metropulos of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival directs the national The Acting Company at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, performing on the McGuire Proscenium Stage. Metropulos' Romeo and Juliet, handsomely mounted against a gray-stone two-story building façade with overhanging balcony and two-level staircase, features a white wooden-arched entrance stage right, covered lights hanging from the brick, ornate railings, and a park bench center stage. Metropulos begins the production on a strong note, with the entire cast of thirteen taking the stage in a somber, almost funereal procession, wearing dark raincoats and partly concealed beneath black umbrellas. Against the sound effect of a light rainfall, they take turns reciting the lines of the Prologue, dramatically enunciating the final line as a group. The costuming evokes the early twentieth century, perhaps the 1920s,
The opening brawl between the Capulets and the Montagues is a slow moving conflict between men in pin-striped suits and spats with wing tips wielding their non-lethal looking umbrellas as if swords. A young Capulet servant named Perrin incites the brawl, her bottom swatted by a brother, and she shoves an apple into his mouth then goads him into insulting the passing Montagues. Metropulos also elevates the secondary Montague character of Abraham, who seems a hard drinking expatriate type, stumbling along after Romeo and Mercutio, swilling from a flask and suffering hangover headaches, a headband tied around his forehead and sunglasses shielding his eyes. The crowd's gasps and shouts at the brawl seem an over-reaction since they are merely swinging flimsy umbrellas, and the dark-haired and booming-voiced Tybalt inflames the conflict by pulling a sword from his walking-stick cane. The fight remains sluggish and unconvincing, although the background scoring music is exciting and well timed to the action. The Prince halts the brawl with shouts from the balcony, played by the same actor who portrays Mercutio, but with an obvious fake mustache.
Romeo and Juliet usually relies on strong central characters, the romantic leads young enough to be convincing teenagers but talented enough to handle the array of emotions and difficult poetry, and with a dreamy but intensely physical chemistry to their interactions. Sonny Valicenti's brawny Romeo has some success, especially in his interaction with Mercutio, shadow-boxing playfully in a convincing portrait of schoolboy friendship. Romeo's romantic immaturity seems a little overplayed in his wrinkled light blue pants, black-and-white checkered vest, and dreamy gazings at the sky. His true nature is better revealed in his actions, such as when he shows his sensitivity in recognizing Perrin's inability to read and graciously helping her decipher the Capulet ball guest list. Laura Esposito fairs better as Juliet, a pretty girl with a wealth of lush black hair and a pixieish expression. Petite and girlish, her silly interactions with the Nurse - sneaking up behind her, prodding her playfully - seem like occasional lapses in quickly advancing maturity, and are more convincing than Valicenti's affectations. Esposito's Juliet may squeal at the mention of marriage, but she also coyly reveals a yearning maturity in her facial expression when she considers the thought. Valicenti's Romeo and Esposito's Juliet share scant chemistry, however. he big and brooding but looking younger than her, she tiny and fiery and intelligent, seeming well out of his league.
Metropulos tries valiantly to establish some chemistry with the masque, as Romeo and his boys don well-fitted black tuxedoes but add strange masks with fake noses. Romeo's eventual rival, Paris, can be immediately dismissed due to his dorkish demeanor and his red, white, and blue suit. Romeo watches the dancing to phonograph records from the balcony, Mercutio parading in his white suit, Capulet slapping Tybalt for his anger at a Montague's intrusion, and all of them upstaged by Abraham's drunken lurch, background mumbling, amused guffaws, and swigs from a flask. To the sound effects of exploding fireworks, the entire party shifts stage left to stand and stare up at the sky as if at an awe-inspiring exhibit of pyrotechnics. They freeze in place as Romeo and Juliet speak with each for the first time stage left, and the exploding sound effects resume with their first kiss - "you kiss by the book" - but soon Mercutio is dancing wildly with Lord Capulet and Romeo must hide from his friends beneath the balcony stairs before sneaking back to the masque. Esposito and Valicenti have endearing moments - she dreamy-eyed in the balcony, her cheek in her hand, wearing a white nightgown that somehow resembles a wedding dress, then jolting with surprise at the sound of his voice and hiding in the shadows - and he standing tip-toe on a bench to reach for her in the balcony, then lunging, one leg dangling and twitching - and they share a funny little peek at one another between breaks in the railing, but with little spark of true romance between them. They don't make a good visual couple and show little discernible adoration for one another, although Friar Laurence must hem and haw and finally interrupt their wedding kiss, later.
The Friar and the Nurse arrive mid-play like breaths of fresh air. Friar Laurence enters wearing a hat and apron, carrying a big wicker basket as if just returned form the fields, evoking a simple honesty with expression and gesture. His surprise at the impending marriage - "Holy St Francis!" - draws the heartiest of the production's few laughs. And Elizabeth Stahlmann as the Nurse provides the performance of the show, a whirling dervish chatterbox who steals scene after scene in an endearingly memorable portrait of an opinionated family servant. She follows Abraham onstage - he hunched over and hung over, trying to pick up his cap but continuously kicking it away from himself - in a shawl and hat, with parasol. After the teasing of Romeo - "struck with a white witch's black eye" - she endures the joking of Mercutio, including magic tricks from her hat, fanning her with her shawl, then crude gestures and a kiss, loudly complaining while obviously enjoying the attention. She objects to compensation - "not a penny" - but holds her hand out to Romeo, palm up, then mercilessly teases Juliet, who charges down the stage to greet her with teenaged energy. Rubbing her temples and out of breath - "where is your mother?" - she arrives toting a shopping bag, another servant behind her over-laden with boxes and bags.
The pivotal 3.1 fight features a wary circling by Mercutio of Tybalt, touching his pointed cane with his hat. When Romeo intervenes and offers Tybalt his hand, Tybalt spits on it, and to dramatic strings, the fight begins in earnest, but again is just with walking sticks until Valicenti's Romeo is knocked down, and swords are drawn. The intensity of the fighting increases, as does the intensity of the music, and soon Mercutio is staggering, holding a spotted red handkerchief to his side. Then Tybalt knocks Romeo down and lunges for another kill, but Valicenti's Romeo spins and thrusts from the stage floor, killing Tybalt with an upward stab. Romeo rises to his knees, realizes he has killed Juliet's cousin, and shouts "O, I am fortune's fool!" to signal a blackout for intermission. Metropulos repeats the line for dramatic emphasis to begin her second act, with the Prince - Mercutio in his bad mustache - presiding from the balcony over a teeming crowd below that includes the Friar and the Nurse. They disperse as gentle music begins to play and Esposito's Juliet descends to the stage, but she drops to her knees at the news of Romeo's banishment, just as Valienti's Romeo falls to his knees in despair, moments later, within the Friar's chamber.
After a nondescript wedding night scene, with Juliet embracing Romeo from behind as they hold hands, Juliet is confronted by her silk-pajama clad parents. Lord Capulet, who moments earlier had gently taken a serving tray from a sleepy Perrin and urged her to get some rest, becomes violently angry at his daughter's disobedience. He picks the waifish Esposito up by the arms and hurls her to the stage, then kneels to yell in her face. When Esposito's Juliet takes her mother's hands in an attempted appeal, Lady Capulet coldly removes Juliet's hands from her own and stomps away. Juliet's desperate appeal to the Friar causes him to disarm her, seizing a dagger from her hand and blessing her with it. Unlike the resolute Juliet in the Baz Luhrmann film version, Esposito's heroine struggles with the deception and the risk as well as the prospect of waking next to the recently deceased Tybalt, drinking her poison only upon deeper thoughts of Romeo. And Stahlmann's Nurse makes the tragic discovery heartbreaking, as she scurries about Juliet's bedroom, always talking and rushing about, and when she discovers Juliet's death, she panics and cries out, but with the presence of mind to conceal both Juliet's dagger as well as the vial of poison.
Metropulos stages the final scenes quickly, spinning Esposito's Juliet in her bed to the other side of the stage, shrouding her in a sheet, and adding candles to represent the Capulet tomb. After Romeo's pledge of resolve - "then I defy you, stars!" - he visits another oddly eccentric and detailed character, the Apothecary, a bearded blind man in round sunglasses and rock-and-roll sideburns and hair like a decadent John Lennon, greedily sniffing at Romeo's money. Valicenti's Romeo overwhelms Paris with a knife-thrust to the belly, then takes his poison on Juliet's bier, curling up and dying while clutching his sides at Juliet's feet before he can fulfill - "thus with a kiss, I die" - his promise. The dramatic nature of the ending is diminished somewhat by the Friar's inexplicable rush-in and rush-back-out, then the watch arriving and probing the crypt with flashlights, but concealing their faces from the audience and muffling their voices so they are not recognized as doubling actors, then the Prince appearing above to admonish the families ("all are punish'd") and begin the fathers' series of conciliatory promises.
Overall, an entertaining and well-designed production, crisply paced and handsomely scored, with strong portrayals of Juliet and the Friar, as well as a memorably endearing Nurse. But emphasis on minor characters such as Perrin, Abraham, and the Apothecary weaken the tragic drive of the story, as does the limply played family feud, and especially the listless by-the-book romance of Juliet and her Romeo.