Photo: Erika Nizborski.

Romeo and Juliet

Folger Theatre Company
, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.

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In a glancing Wayne’s World meets West Side Story production, award-winning director Raymond O. Caldwell brings to Washington, DC, and Folger Theatre’s intimate stage a modern-day telling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This reviewer saw a performance of this production on October 10, 2024.

Like the 1992 Saturday-Night-Live-inspired film Wayne’s World, Caldwell’s loud and flashy adaptation of the star-crossed lovers uses broadcast media as a conduit for telling the story of awkward first love. Caldwell’s production, certainly meant for a young audience, is heavy on video. There are multiple screens of varying sizes—some carrying live feeds—embedded in Jonathan Dahm Robertson’s fascinatingly intricate scenic design. Like Wayne’s World, Caldwell’s Shakespeare features young men sniggering about the opposite sex’s anatomy. However, Caldwell steps much further across the tech line to include cell phones and laptops. And yes, even a cell phone doesn’t provide the immediacy needed to save Romeo and Juliet from their tragic ends.

Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story is a Twentieth Century version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Like West Side Story (take your pick: the original live-staged musical or various film versions), Caldwell’s production is heavy on fraught social interactions. These present as a dance party (a rave for Caldwell’s version), harrowing knife fights (hats off to Fight Choreographer Robb Hunter), and substance abuse. Romeo (Cole Taylor) constantly pulls on his flask of alcohol and Juliet (Caro Reyes Rivera) pauses occasionally for a snort of cocaine. OK, so Caldwell’s Juliet is not the nice girl Maria of West Side Story.

The Twenty-First Century Juliet has more of the bad behavior of her male counterpart Romeo. At the opening of his production, Caldwell invokes Maria (yes, The Virgin, Mother of Jesus, but Juliet is also, at this point in the play, a nice girl with her maidenhead intact like Maria of West Side Story). Here’s how Caldwell does it—as a recording of Schubert’s “Ave Maria” plays, two stylishly black-and-white clad clerics parade solemnly through the audience to the stage. Enfolded in this image of the clerics in black-and-white costumes is the visual that Romeo (Cole Taylor) is a Black man and Juliet (Caro Reyes Rivera) is a White Latino. In other words, these costumes echo the director’s casting. This is significant for the role Friar Lawrence plays in causing the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. Don’t discount that invoking the name Maria summons the West Side Story Maria inspired by Shakespeare’s Juliet.

One more surprising thing about Caldwell’s production—Juliet, her mother Lady Capulet (Fran Tapia,) and Juliet’s Nurse (Luz Nicolas) often speak to each other in Spanish. Don’t forget that Sondheim and Bernstein’s Maria is Puerto Rican. In Caldwell’s production, surtitles appear on one video screen well above the players. Because one doesn’t expect Shakespeare’s words to be in any language except English, this initially proves to be disorienting. It’s a way to make Shakespeare’s language new as if the audience is hearing it for the first time. Also, in contrast to his family, Lord Capulet, Juliet’s father, is a white man with a southern accent who speaks no Spanish.

Standout performers include Cole Taylor (Romeo), Caro Reyes Rivera (Juliet), and Luz Nicolas (Nurse). They make the old language of Shakespeare’s time come alive meaningfully for the present day.

Jeannette Christensen’s costumes are notably memorable. For example, Romeo’s pants have a colorful side panel that runs down the outside of his legs and these colors are picked up in his artfully colored shoes. Friar Lawrence (Brandon Carter), presented in this production as a televangelist, wears a striking black suit studded with sparkling beads.

There isn’t a dull moment in this production. It would be worth seeing Caldwell’s Romeo and Juliet a second time to explore the production more deeply.

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