Tonight I saw my first theater production of the year, and my first CalShakes production since 2019 as they’ve been locked down a long time. This was a last-minute decision when I realized they were only going to be doing the first play of the season for another couple of weeks, but I bought tickets last night. (They’re only doing 2 plays this season). I ended up sitting front row center. It was a beautifully warm evening and I barely needed a jacket.
I was a little hesitant to go for this first play because it sounded a bit like a woke-Berkeley play, but because I love Romeo and Juliet so much I decided to forge ahead. This was a bilingual adaptation of Romeo and Juliet called Romeo y Juliet. It was pretty much the same story with some notable changes. The first was the setting, 1800s Alta California (Mexico), and the dialog floated back and forth between English and Spanish. Due to the acting (which was very good) and emotion you could follow the flow of things even though you didn’t always understand the words — but I’m glad I knew the play quite well. I recognized some of my favorite speeches, but for me, they suffered a bit from bouncing back and forth in language. Nothing beats the Shakespeare language for some of the key speeches. But the change of setting and language was an interesting variation that overall made the play interesting.
The second big shift in the play was to have Romeo be a woman. I didn’t find this added anything to the play other than being different. The dramaturg before the play suggested this was a 3rd layer of the adaption showing how Juliet was rebelling in a way consistent with a relationship that is allowed in 2022. The actors were good and carried it off, but it felt a little flat. The casting didn’t help this: the actress playing Juliet appeared youthful and innocent, which worked perfectly; however, the actress playing Romeo was quite a bit older (which was particularly evident from my front-row seat), and she didn’t really play it youthful, so it was a little creepy like a middle-age woman was going after this 13-year-old girl. But apart from those quibbles, the emotional highlights came off. Overall I found the play very moving, as it almost always is for me, and I’m very glad I went.
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