ISF R&J

Because tickets are RIDICULOUSLY cheap if you're a student (holler!), I got season tickets to the Shakespeare Festival. Niki and I went to go see the opening play, Romeo and Juliet, together, which of course, brought back memories of the 6th grade class play. Not all of them were good. 

On week nights, the show opens with the Green Show, a short improv performance by Joe and Tom, the members of the Fool Squad (also C of I's 2012-2013 Faculty President...). They interact with the audience, taste their food and drink, tease, make jokes and keep the audience laughing, as well as introduce the play.

Everybody and their mother knows the story of Romeo and Juliet (in fact, I think I can still recite the prologue and I CERTAINLY can recite at least 50% of Juliet's lines...) so I want to mention some things I loved about this production.

I really enjoyed the interplay between Romeo and his two pals, Mercutio and Benvolio. Mercutio was played so well- he's such a smarmy character, keeps getting others into trouble, starts trouble himself, yet at the end, you identify with his cry of "A plague on both your houses!"

I loved what they did with the costumes. The show was set in 1920s Italy and you felt like it was the 1920s. Not only were the costumes beautiful, they the color scheme was so great. They were all in blacks and shades of gray, except for Juliet who wore a very light shade of purple. The picture below shows a great spectrum, from Mercutio in the near-white, Romeo in grey and Tybalt in all black. It was just another way to portray the various relationships and the complexity of the feud between the Monatuges and the Capulets.

Another great example of the various shades of color. Even Juliet's purple is almost a shade of gray in itself.

Side note about open air theater. Around the end of the first half, the wind started to pick up and it almost felt like that opening scene in "Wizard of Oz" where everything starts swirling around and you can tell something bad is going to happen. The wind was strong but the temp was still warm and I didn't need a sweater or anything. But the wind kept picking up until you couldn't really hear what the performers were saying. The actors were in the middle of the scene below- Friar Lawrence comforting Romeo after Tybalt was killed- when an announcement came on for the actors to hold and go backstage and then telling the audience that they were going to hold the play for 15 and see if the wind would die down. By the time it had started, a lot of people had left.

 In their defense, it's not like they didn't know how it ended....