Poor Players Theatre Company takes its name from a line in Macbeth. One assumes there’s a touch of irony involved, for the company’s work over nine seasons has been far above poor.
But sometimes, the look of a PP show is pretty poor, and such is the case with the Romeo and Juliet now on display through April 4 at the Swedenborg Hall in Hillcrest.
Romeo (Justin Lang) and Juliet (Katie Dupont).
Courtesy photo
The set is a couple of benches hauled about as needed. Typical of the properties is the motley arsenal of weapons brandished about: a baseball bat, a plastic chain, AK-47 assault rifles and a janitor’s broom, plus swords and knives of many descriptions.
And the costumes! Forget the mothers of the cast. This stuff looks to have been assembled by enemies of the cast. Plus, nobody ever changes clothes! The star-cross’d lovers spend their wedding night in the same slacker black (him) and tacky sundress (her) that they been wearing around Verona. She even gets buried in hers. Juliet’s Nurse at least gets a tight evening gown to wear everywhere day and night.
Of course, that’s not really what’s important for good Shakespeare, no more than the tinny recorded music and the occasional drum thump or the lighting design that consists mostly of on/off switches.
What really counts is the clarity of delivery and the unity of approach. And here, director Nick Kennedy gets a better than “poor” rating but nothing much beyond average.
As usual in this company, Kennedy relies on youthful passion and vigor, always an acceptable plan for R&J. The lack of final polish and coordination is sad because vitality itself is not the solution. Instead, it’s the successful projection, through theatre art, of that vitality.
Katie Dupont, for example, is an entirely adequate Juliet, a nice combination of youth, beauty and intelligence, but she swallows some lines, misjudges some volume levels and fumbles some timing that all make a difference. More work would have fixed most of the problems.
Justin Lang’s Romeo is ardent but splattered, an appealing guy worthy more of best wishes than awestruck pity. Concentration on focus might do wonders.
Both actors have the needed chops. They just aren’t in tune with their characters or with each other, not enough for this masterpiece anyway.
Like most Shakespeare companies working on the cheap, this R&J is plagued with a steep drop-off in talent, training or experience as the roles get smaller.
Max Macke is a professorial Friar Laurence with no distinguishing marks but Rhona Gold’s Nurse gradually blossoms into a very distinctive and plausible character, quite deft with the bawdy. And Neil McDonald could play Lord Capulet for anybody.
The director himself is the Mercutio, a dangerous decision since this notorious showboat role always needs some authoritative supervision. Since he too has the chops and certainly knows where this production is going, actor Kennedy does pretty well. With more of an eye on these key scenes, however, director Kennedy might have brought everybody else up to his own level.
James Cota does solid service as the patient Benvolio and look-alikes Paul Rossi and Brendan Cavalier play Count Paris and the Prince of Verona respectively with strong masculine airs. But Sarah McKenna understands Lady Capulet better than she plays her and poor Brittany Bailey is cross-gendered into the aggressive bully boy Tybalt with no chance of success. When she and the other two Capulet retainers (also female) advance on Romeo and his pals it looks like the guys are being menaced by a girls’ gang.
Worst of all, I can’t think right away of a single truly uplifting moment, the sort of thing I usually get with the Poor Players, just an energetic reading of scattered competence and, well, poor resources.
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