Comedic twists on Shakespearean tragedies are apparently becoming something of a trend. Two of the most prominent Tony Award nominees this year are the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fat Ham, an uproarious and affecting spin on Hamlet set in the contemporary South, and the rather less inspired & Juliet, which reimagines the Bard’s tale of star-crossed lovers as a musical camp-fest fueled by high-carb pop hits.
At first blush, the new production of Romeo & Juliet that just opened at Classic Stage Company—presented by the National Asian American Theatre Company in partnership with Two River Theater—promises to deliver, if not a similarly revisionist take, then one with a decided satirical bent and supersized doses of comic relief. Young actors approach the circular stage carrying boxes marked with props; one of them, Daniel Liu, who will double as a giddily mannered Lady Capulet and a hapless servant named Peter, gets tangled in the curtain that hangs loosely over Junghyun Georgia Lee’s bare set before donning the skirt that will transform him into Juliet’s mom.
South Korean-born playwright Hansol Jung’s “modern verse translation,” which she co-directs with Dustin Wills, re-introduces Romeo’s buddy Mercutio, played by an artfully preening Jose Gamo, as a wanna-be hip-hop poet. Romeo himself carries a guitar and sings some of his lines, as Juliet will as well, to wistful melodies composed by Brian Quijada. (Like Gounod, and Leonard Bernstein, Quijada and music director Nygel D. Robinson have made them a tenor and soprano, though more in a pop vein.) When the couple has their fateful meeting at the Capulets’ masked ball, Juliet is wearing a birdcage over her head—though she’s hardly conspicuous among the other guests, several of whom sport Groucho glasses replete with prosthetic noses.
But as anyone who caught Jung’s heartwrenching Wolf Play during its two off-Broadway runs could have predicted, this Romeo & Juliet is hardly a goof. As with that original play—which was also staged, by Wills, in a spare and frisky fashion, with an almost DIY sensibility—Jung and Willis insert ominous touches from the start, but let the tragic developments unfold in a way that can make their sting feel, in this case, surprisingly fresh.
When Juliet’s cousin Tybalt—played here by Rob Kellogg, who’s also adroitly clueless as her suitor Paris—confronts Romeo, for instance, we know that he’s sentencing himself and Mercutio to death, and setting in motion the chain of events that will also doom the play’s title characters. But as Jung and Wills structure it, the fatal battle begins almost playfully, and the first casualty is revealed with a purposeful ambiguity that leaves Romeo, if not the audience, almost faked out for a long moment.
The playwright and her co-director sustain this unlikely suspense, so that however often you’ve revisited this most famous account of doomed love, you start to expect the unexpected. A passage of premature mourning for Juliet evolves into a debate over the true meaning of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” with musicians—various instruments are played in the production, with the theme to “Peter and the Wolf” also figuring in to droll effect—taking part. Theater veteran and NAATCO co-founder Mia Katigbak, after establishing a stern dignity as Verona’s prince, reveals a bawdy wit as Juliet’s nurse.
As for the leads, both Major Curda’s sweetly earnest Romeo and Dorcas Leung’s spirited, winsome Juliet bring a tender, breathless urgency to their scenes together, up to their devastating final moments. Under Jung and Wills’s astute guidance, they capture the idealism and ardor unique to youth, and ensure that, for all of this production’s piquant irreverence, their Romeo & Juliet remains a story of woe.
Romeo & Juliet opened May 14, 2023, at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater and runs through June 3. Tickets and information: naatco.org
