The DeBaun Performing Arts Center (PAC) presented its annual Shakespeare production last week, playing three performances of Romeo & Juliet from February 16 to 18. The perennial romantic tragedy was brought to life by director Dr. Bethany Reeves, Music Program Coordinator for PAC, with Cameron Clifford and Julia Wierzbicki headlining as Romeo and Juliet, respectively.
Audience members were treated to a story as familiar as it is adored: In Verona, Italy, Romeo Montague falls hopelessly in love with Juliet, who happens to be the daughter of the Capulet family, the bitter enemies of the Montagues. The violent feud, the cause of which nobody can remember, results in profound tragedy for their star-crossed children.
Romeo & Juliet marks the tenth year of DeBaun PAC’s Shakespeare production program, which has included performances of Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This year is PAC’s first time workshopping what is perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous play.
As described by Dr. Reeves in the director’s note, “Romeo & Juliet is not so much a tragedy as a comedy that goes terribly, terribly wrong.” In fact, most of the play’s first half had the audience in continuous laughter. The actor’s performances were aided by inspired and intelligent stage directions, which, according to the paper program, were composed as accurately to the original versions as possible through “text mining” the earliest published texts. The motion and interaction onstage accompanied the writing so well that you’d be forgiven for forgetting that the dialogue was written over four centuries ago. Standout performances in this regard included Samantha Weckesser’s hilarious portrayal of Juliet’s bawdy and boisterous nurse, as well as Hissam Effendi’s genial and antic-prone Benvolio, Romeo’s best friend and seemingly the only voice of reason in Verona.
Performances like these and Ryder Bidwell’s blustering Mercutio injected levity into a show that many forget is largely driven by misfortune and violence. By the start of the show’s second half, which followed a 12-minute intermission, the mood of the play was transformed dramatically. Some of the most somber scenes were carried by acts like Kayleigh Kubit’s irascible Tybalt, who dies at the hands of a vengeful and ashamed Romeo and later reappears as a phantom to a hysterical Juliet. Growing in significance over the course of the story is Michael Marnell’s hapless Friar Laurence, the wise and trustworthy confidant of Romeo, who is the first to despair of the consequences of the frantic passions that have consumed the feuding families.
Cameron Clifford and Julia Wierzbicki commanded the stage as the title characters and spanned both sides of its tonal shift. Their deliveries of some of the play’s most famous soliloquies helped audience members to remember the power and context of familiar lines. Wierzbicki’s Juliet deftly carried some of the funniest parts as she played the impatient youth off of her intractable aging nurse, while simultaneously navigating dark and traumatic scenes, including her ultimate suicide. Clifford, meanwhile, consistently communicated Romeo’s rash but authentic love for Juliet, which ends in his like demise.
Dr. Reeves concludes the so-called “fatal flaw” of the play is ill-advised haste. In their mad rush to exercise their emotions, whether desperate love or irrational hate, the Montagues and Capulets ultimately ravage each other so completely that they have no choice but to accept a peace that has cost the lives of their son and daughter.
It’s a compelling message that might explain why the play has maintained such incredible longevity. Whatever the reason Romeo & Juliet still plays so often today, DeBaun PAC’s interpretation and execution of this classic story under Dr. Reeves does it justice.
Those interested in experiencing DeBaun PAC’s production of Romeo & Juliet for themselves will be able to watch a recording of one of the performances on PAC’s YouTube channel and can view production photos on DeBaun’s Flickr channel.
