The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

Two Pence Shakespeare’s inaugural production is honest enough to remind any cynics that The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet really is a great play. Plotty, sexy, violent and comic: For a play as often mounted as this, it’s an accomplishment to convey its worth—even if imperfectly.

Setting the play in Italy between World Wars, artistic director Wells seems to want to use the star-crossed lovers and their hot tempers to explore the re-entry of soldiers into society, but the concept is so underexploited it’s essentially mute, leaving primarily just a pretty idiom for the costume design.

Trimming the script keeps the show near its optimistic promise of “two hours’ traffic” while preserving revealing monologues for smaller characters such as Lord Capulet (Andy Baldeschwiler) and Juliet’s Nurse (Sherry Legare). Still, the production suffers from some pacing problems; in a play this well-known, a lot of the exposition feels extraneous, and much of it either drags or is too rushed. Lamentably, the play loses steam during most of the fights, which are performed at molasses speed and tend to leave some actors standing around the periphery as if waiting for their cues.

Notable, though, is the use of humor to emphasize the protagonists’ youth. The pause, for instance, in Romeo’s haste to marry (“I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray, / That thou consent to marry us…today”) evokes his youth and impatience. Heightening the absurdity powerfully intensifies the tragedy.

• More theater reviews
• More Theater articles