The Play’s The Thing

I’ve been to a couple of plays in the past two weeks, and they were both really good, but quite different. The Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s Romeo and Juliet is performed in The New American Shakespeare Tavern, on Peachtree Street, just a couple of blocks from the Fox Theatre. This is a small playhouse, modeled after the Globe, with a stage which juts out onto the floor and a rustic balcony. In Shakespeare’s day, the folks around the stage stood up, having paid only a penny, and were known as “groundlings.” We paid a bit more to have a table close to the stage, and this is a really intimate experience. There are no bad spots, since the facility seats only about 235 patrons. For this production, they used an additional section in front of the stage, which served as the tomb in Act V, and we were no more than five feet from it. The interpretation of a Shakespeare play is always important, and I’ve never seen a Juliet who giggled so much, but it did work. The actress managed to make us believe for a while that she was not yet 14 and very much in love with her Romeo. Mercutio wasn’t as dynamic as I thought he should be, and that didn’t seem quite right. One of my former colleagues believes that Shakespeare killed him off because he was stealing the show, and that didn’t seem to be the case with this production. Still, we all found something to like in this version of Romeo and Juliet.

More recently, I accompanied a church group to the Atlanta Passion Play, at the Atlanta Civic Center. We had seats in the “dress circle” which turned out to be pretty far from the stage. In fact, a few rows above us, a group were passing around binoculars, and it would have been a good idea. Despite the distance from the stage, this production is really interesting. The cast was numerous, the sound system brought out some very fine vocals, the orchestra was first rate, and the lighting made the events almost surreal. I’ve seen many versions of this story, of course, but this one is almost as sprawling as one of the old epics from the ’50’s. I was halfway expecting to see Charleton Heston stride across the stage with a staff in his hand. My favorite musical version of the Easter story is “The Day He Wore My Crown” and the passion play didn’t change that, but it is beautifully done, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a lovingly crafted Easter musical.

I’m a fan of movies, but there is something wonderful about a live action drama, and I was blessed by each of these performances.

The Good Parts Version

Do you remember The Princess Bride by William Goldman, or the excellent film version of that same story? I read it decades back, as a young woman with plenty of summer and a library card. The frame for it stated that it was “the good parts version” and I had never read anything like it. By that, I mean I hadn’t read a story within a framework. Of course, I hadn’t quite read anything so funny and yet so filled with adventure. Doing a “good parts” version did work for that piece.

That said, I found out on Monday that my son’s teacher skipped the end of Romeo and Juliet. Yep, you read that right. He said they were reading it aloud and their reading became laborious, so the teacher summarized the rest of the play and showed them the movie version. I asked when they stopped and he said just after Friar Lawrence gives Juliet the vial. That means he didn't get to hear the fourth act, with the magnificent soliloquy by Juliet as she debates whether or not she should take the potion. That scene is also omitted in the film version most popular with teachers.

As a former high school English teacher, I was appalled. Oh, I usually relied on a tape of professional Shakespearian actors rather than ninth graders for the reading, but by gosh, we read the whole play. Indeed, I’ve struggled with Julius Caesar and Macbeth from time to time, but anyone ought to be able to teach ninth graders (kids who are 14 and 15) a play about a pair of rebellious teenaged lovers. If you can’t, I do believe it is time to find a new line of work.

The Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta does Romeo and Juliet each year, in February , of course, so I must get tickets to that. My son deserves more than the good parts version, and so do most young people. Great stories deserve to be told, and R & J qualifies as great in my mind.