There was a huge turnout last Saturday night for Romeo and Juliet. And rightly so: it was ISC's best production of a tragedy since Othello.
Everybody knows Romeo and Juliet, but Romeo and Juliet is not for everybody. ISC discerned that the play is not concerned with the grownup world. Adults figure into the action only to prompt hyperbolic outbursts from the principal kids. Both Romeo's and Juliet’s ardor and their despair are absolute and absurd. They exult, despair, scream, weep, wave knives above their wrists and drink poison. Erika Soto was a very appropriately girlish Juliet, and Nikhil Pai a cute and goofy Romeo. They are always on the borderline of annoying.
Dryden claims that Shakespeare joked that he had to kill Mercutio in Act 3 or else Mercutio would have killed the play. Certainly up to the point of his death, R&J is only semi-serious. Especially in Griffith Park, where ISC’s champion buffoon André Martin made Mercutio resound above even the helicopters. Once he was gone, the teen lovers' absurdity becomes unstoppable, and, in the end, terrifying.
The musical accompaniment that jangled throughout the evening echoed Joy Division and Television, and gave the Capulets and Montague’s the air of rival new wave gangs—also entirely appropriate.
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