This week is the second week of Indianapolis’s annual Bard Fest, a festival where a gathering of local theater companies each put on a production of a Shakespeare Play, and Catalyst Reparatory, the company behind my first reviewed production, Arcade Fire brings us a production of arguably the bards most famous play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Unlike my first review, to give a synopsis of Romeo and Juliet would just be a waste of space for this review. If you are reading this you know the story: it was either forced on you in school, you performed in it or you have seen one of the countless adaptations of it. What I will do instead is focus on the performances of the actors and how it compares to the other productions of the story I have seen, which include Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 retelling, which shaped the idea of this play for a lot of those my age and a production my high school put on. I’m sure it is hard to present this story in a fresh way that does not come off hackneyed or unoriginal, and the director Zach Stonerock does his best, using minimal sets, basic costume design and lighting choices that let the play speak for itself. If you aren’t a fan of the play, which I am on the fence about, this play will likely not change that in its straightforward presentation. What I really took away with this play, both its good qualities and bad, come from the casting decisions and the performance of the actors. Firstly, the casting of the eponymous characters is rather spot on with Eli Robinson and Arcade Fire’s Kayla Lee embodying the youthful vigor and fatalism of the two star crossed lovers. It also helps that they look and are much younger than the rest of the cast. But this retelling’s true triumph is how it presents the story’s main conflict. The scenes with the two leads are imbued with the kind of unbridled lust felt by those just entering puberty, the kind of lust linked to series of bad choices that lead down a dark path. Their decisions come off as silly and wasteful, especially in the scenes involving the nurse and Friar Laurence, played by Beverly Roche and Kelsey Leigh Miller respectively (who give the play’s best performances, along with the actor who played the Prince, who for safety reasons cannot be named), who both seem to orbit these two young bodies that seem hell-bent on their mutual destruction. That might be the directorial intent to shed a light on aspects of this famous play that go unquestioned (for a really good analysis of this idea, watch the Nostalgia Critic’s editorials on this play and The Graduate). While this idea sets it apart, this is far from a perfect production, and its flaws could be quite glaring. The show as a whole lacks a certain gravity and emotional weight. It might have been the lack of intermission or something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I’m pretty positive it really wasn’t there. The secondary characters, such as Benvolio, Tybalt and both sets of parents left little impression on me, but the performance of Mercutio did, and in a bad way. The actor who played them, Kelsey VanVoorst, seemed too intent on chewing the scenery and overshadowing the other performers, with the Rosaline speech near the beginning coming off forced and painfully artificial and their eventual death and passionate dying words completely unearned, although their scene after the party produced the biggest reaction from the audience. Like I said before, this production of a most familiar play is not likely to change your mind about it, but it takes a few calculated risks, and I’m happy a few of them paid off.
Rating: 3/5
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