Romeo and Juliet

Phew. Ok, sorry I lied about being able to write yesterday...it turned out to be a fairly busy day and before I knew it, I was back on the bus to London and without internet access. But today :-) is my blog day and I am going to try to do it up right.

Last night we saw Romeo and Juliet at the Regent's Park Theatre in London. Now, I have to tell you that I have never really loved this play for some reason. I taught it this past year to my 8th graders and honestly never felt inspired with it...so I was really hoping to have a new experience with it both in class and at the park. And I did. Hallelujah. Our class had a very stimulating discussion on this play yesterday, getting into its gorgeous language and wrestling with some of its harder passages. Queen Mab speech--what?? We also tried to think about the play's events from every character's perspective, which surprisingly opened things up for me. So many characters can go either way in this play, especially when it comes down to whether or not each has good intentions. R&J is unique in that there is no real villain--everyone means well. So then we talked about the role of fate vs. individual decisions that have very real consequences. Are these lovers really "star-crossed" or do they (and everyone around them) simply make tragic choices? At the end of our marathon 4 hour class, I had many pages of notes and hopeful expectations of the performance that evening. Please let it be good, I kept saying to myself. I want to love this play.

I loved the play. It was everything I could have hoped for and more--Romeo and Juliet were played by talented actors who, I felt, really captured the romance that you can read into the text. I believed their performances and I was sincerely sad at the end (spoil alert--haha) when they died. The performance opened with a very West Side Story look--all the actors on stage singing--and the costumes were from the 50's. However, we noted today that there seemed to be at least some commentary on the terrible knife fights that have been happening in London this summer--over 20 teens dead. Awful. All of the fight scenes used knives, but their actions suggested that the murders of Mercutio and Tybalt were accidental; the teens simply didn't know how to use knives.

There was a lot of rearranging of lines, a lot of cutting of lines, and several scenes which overlapped each other (3.2 and 3.3 for example) effectively. I had never noticed how much those scenes paralleled each other. Paris didn't die at the end, which was great because he was a nice guy in the play :-). The Capulets' marriage was a wreck; Lady Capulet loved Tybalt, which actually helps explain why she is so griefstriken over his death.

Without Paris or the Page or Friar Lawrence in the last scene at the Capulets' tomb, the ending very clearly focused on the deaths of the two lovers. Paris takes the vial with his back towards Juliet, and as he is drinking, she starts moving. She touches him as he drinks the last drop. This was PAINFUL to watch. I don't know if it was because I just said goodbye to Clay that morning or because these two actors did such a great job convincing me this was love and not lust, but I was really moved.

I have decided to focus on R&J for my final project in the course: a teaching unit in which I incorporate performance techniques and considerations. I will be watching several movie versions and reading several critical books on the play in the next week or so, and I am hoping that time will also increase my love and appreciation for the play. I am excited to teach it next year; hopefully this preparation will actually lead to more fruitful classes on this play.