Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Bobby Bell
Starring Amberly Clark, Fabiola Rivera and Denis Enos
Seminole State College, Lake Mary, FL</strong>
Transgender Shakespeare seems to know no bounds. If you’ve caught the slightly transgendered “Tempest “in Orlando and want more, I will direct you to this transgender “Romeo and Juliet” up in Lake Mary. Tonight we have two female leads; if you come later it might swap around. I suggest calling the box office for the exact line up.
We all know the story from “West Side Story”: Romeo (Clark) and Juliet (Rivera) are from feuding Veronese families, but raging teen age hormones override any blood feud the elders are still fighting from the papal state era. This Verona has degenerated into a Mad Max post-apocalyptic town infested with quaintly costumed droogies. The tight vinyl pants, Cindy Lauper makeup and impressive-at-a-distance weaponry made for some groovy ultra-violence. I’m not sure who did fight coordination but the battles were impressive if a bit kayfab. The Montague / Capulet war is old; it could be wrapped up with some symbolic sacrifice or two. Romeo had the hots for the never seen Rosalind, she’s over in “As You Like It” at some other college. Romeo is fickle; once she sights Juliet Rosalind is just last week’s meme, and Juliet is equally quick to the mark. Not even death can stop them from mating. Older and cooler heads would negotiate; these kids invade, and love it. Good old Friar Lawrence (Enos) quickly weds this underage pair, they secretly do the deed, and then Romeo gets involved in a gang fight and has to leave. Friar Lawrence offers Juliet Ruffies, and at least everyone has the decency to die in their family tomb. Kids These Days. What’s a dukedom to do?
With vocal projection issues and no microphones it was a bit hard to follow the action; but after you’ve been to this chestnut a few times you can guess the lines. The sharpest action came from Juliet; she’s sexy and projects and seems to genuinely agonize over love. Equally enjoyable was the Nurse (Isaiah Taylor); she dressed like a babushka but greases the kids along the path with her own sexual energy. Tybalt (Eric Arroyo) and Paris (Nikole Torres) were fine fighters; cut out of the sex on stage they had a ton of machismo energy to burn. On the the down side Juliet’s mother (Iyana Collins) spoke way too fast and lost all those hard constants and fricatives you need to punctuate Olde English on stage, and I found Ms. Clark’s Romeo lacked the fire of a horny young man. In an important supporting role Denis Enos was an excellent Friar Lawrence, and the other responsible adult on stage, Larry Stallings, played lord Montague, a man with amazingly few lines. This is a student production; it hits and misses but breathes a violent life into this chestnut of the stage. But like all the other gender crossing productions I’ve seen, I still don’t get why it’s supposed to be better.
For more information on the Seminole State College Theater program, please visit http://www.seminolestate.edu/arts/theatre/boxoffice.htm
