The Verona Project

I got together with the old crew for a California Shakespeare outing for the first time in quite a while. They even convinced Jeff to come along. This was CalShakes production of a new play, The Verona Project. This was a play inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona, but it was quite different. It began with a band, and the songs began telling the story, then the members of the band became players in the play. I’ll give it a little credit for some ambitious inventiveness, but in the end it seemed to me a muddle. From a musical perspective, it was just OK. There were some decent songs, but some of the main singers were just marginal. From the perspective of a play, it was very preachy trying to bring all sorts of sexual orientation issues in that seemed more forced and exploitational than natural and story enhancing. At the end of the day, this was the least enjoyable play I can recall seeing in a very long time. Not a great way to restart the California theater experience.