{"id":8231,"date":"2019-10-31T09:14:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T13:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8231"},"modified":"2020-10-13T13:01:38","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T17:01:38","slug":"romeo-and-juliet-on-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8231","title":{"rendered":"Romeo and Juliet: On Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Romeo<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor never was a story of more woe,\nthan this of Juliet and her Romeo.\u201d The\nShakespeare Theatre of New Jersey<\/a>\nopened its production of this classic tragedy, directed by Ian\nBelknap, runs through November 17. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know the story. An implacable\nhatred has arisen between two Verona families: the Capulets and the Montagues.\nPrince Escalus (played by Jason C. Brown), fed up with the\nconstant street-fighting of the two households, vows to have any future\ncombatants executed. Romeo (Keshav Moodliar) attends a banquet\nhosted by the rival Capulets in disguise. He sees their daughter Juliet (Miranda\nRizzolo), the two instantly fall in love, and Friar Lawrence (Matt\nSullivan) secretly marries them. Meanwhile, Juliet\u2019s father (Mark Elliot\nWilson) intends her to marry wealthy Count Paris (Ryan Woods).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romeo\u2019s friend Mercutio (Joshua\nDavid Robinson) is slain by a goading Tybalt of the house of Capulet (Torsten\nJohnson), and Romeo slays him in revenge. Instead of executing Romeo,\nPrince Escalus banishes him. Though the sentence is merciful, Romeo regards it\nas a heart-breaking separation from Juliet. From there, everything goes\ndownhill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, seeing this play\nand reading David Hewson\u2019s admirable Juliet\nand Romeo<\/a>, I\u2019ve come to recognize that, although Romeo is an effective\nswordsman, with at least two notches on his scabbard, he\u2019s something of a\nweakling. He\u2019s dreamy, falls in love too easily, and even his father laments\nhis lack of focus. Yet he needs to be a credible lover, a person who would\ninspire passion and passionate acts. The weakness of this production is the\nlack of chemistry and connection between its two eponymous characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps in trying to make the play\napproachable for new generations, Belknap encouraged the actors to hurry along\nand avoid becoming ensnared by the rhythms of Shakespeare\u2019s prose. If so, it\ndidn\u2019t work for me. At times, the main characters spoke so quickly I couldn\u2019t\nfollow (from the front row). Romeo and Juliet<\/em> is a wonderful play. I\nwant my full measure of enjoyment out of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey\nproductions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable\nfrom NYC by train). For tickets, call the box office at 973-408-5600 or visit\nthe Box\nOffice online<\/a>. Note that STNJ offers special ticket pricing of $30\nfor theatergoers under age 30!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFor never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.\u201d The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey opened its production of this classic tragedy, directed by Ian Belknap, runs through November 17. You know the story. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Romeo and Juliet: On Stage - the classic, in a classy production with a surprising lack of chemistry.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,366,359,104,147],"tags":[1665,197],"class_list":["post-8231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actor","category-drama","category-review","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-romeo-and-juliet","tag-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/STNJ-Romeo-and-Juliet.jpg?fit=504%2C360&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-28L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8233,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8231\/revisions\/8233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}