In his Rep in Depth presentation on opening night, Matt Daniels explained the genesis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Always the ready adapter of a good story, Shakespeare had plenty of potential sources and Daniels lists the myriad of poems, novellas, dramas, legends, etc that preceded the play that he wrote…the most famous and most popular play on stages to this day…and onto the contemporary version, West Side Story. And then a touch on the shift to Appalachia for this adaptation and the dialects there being the closest contemporary dialects to those of Elizabethan England. Intriguing. He even brings up the ‘parallel’ of the Hatfields and McCoys vs. Capulets and Montagues. More on the Appalachia thing later. And finally, since we all know the story, why do we all continue to seek out presentations of Romeo and Juliet. As Daniels said, spoiler alert, they all die. But we still find hope in the story?
Director Laura Braza adapted this version of Romeo and Juliet and sets us in Appalachia and brings into the staging, some bluegrass or early country music. This is the third Shakespeare play in recent memory where the Rep has included contemporary music as a supporting motif….Braza’s Much Ado About Nothing and Daryl Cloran’s As You Like It. Braza has such a clear sense of the story and is such a solid story teller, I don’t think she needed this bit of stage play. And she hews so near the original text and working with the spare stage, this is clearly what Shakespeare would be doing in 2025. But being able to dress the characters in modern dress and working with contemporary accents eliminates distractions and the audience is bound to the story through the text and the action.
Romeo and Juliet requires a rather large ensemble and Braza was fortunate to bring together a cast of very skilled and very popular local actors. Nate Burger who is most often seen on the stages of American Players Theatre plays both Benvolio and Friar Laurence. His Friar Laurence is a bit mischievous in his support of young love and then devious in his plan to thwart authority and finally clearly powerless when actually facing that same authority. Matt Daniels is Lord Capulet and comes across as very much in control and controlling until the ‘death’ of his daughter Juliet…when he loses it and the acting here may be just a little over the top for me. You may have noticed Daniels as Ebenezer Scrooge in Mark Clements’ A Christmas Carol the past few seasons. Laura Rook, also a mainstay at American Players, is Lady Capulet, a clearly loving wife and mother and maybe just a bit of doting mother…but she can be just as stern and demanding as required by the text here.
Dimonte Henning is a graduate of UWM and the Rep’s Emerging Professional Residency and most recently directed Clyde’s for the Milwaukee Chamber Theater. Henning too plays a number of roles but he gives us a very gentlemanly Lord Montague. And Alex Keiper who was June Carter in the Rep’s Ring of Fire and also appeared in Titanic, is an incredible nurse to Juliet. She clearly loves the girl and abets her in her flirtation and marriage to Romeo but too folds in the face of the Capulet’s plans for the girl.
But the high drama at the pivot point in the play is the street fight between the Capulet crew and the Montague family. And here Davis Wood, a current Rep EPR, is Tybalt while Mathew C. Yee, a writer and actor from Chicago, is Mercutio. They give us all of the animus and hatred necessary to bring the fight to its deadly fruition.
But the make or break roles in Romeo and Juliet is casting the right Romeo and the right Juliet…actors who can work off of each other and build a stage chemistry that lets us believe in the story. Braza has done that here.
Kenneth Hamilton is our Romeo, another returning actor from Braza’s Much Ado. Hamilton is the complete Romeo here: full of swagger, a hormonal young male, easily swayed in love, and little thought beyond himself. Hamilton easily portrays a teenager in love, well for the moment. All in to the point of ignoring his own safety, both in the garden under Juliet’s window and later as Friar Laurence tries to whisk him away in the face of his exile. But he also swiftly portrays the hot blooded street fighter who slays Tybalt which brings his world crashing down and the brash lover who returns home to face death on the news that Juliet has died. Hamilton’s interactions with our Juliet play true.
What light through yonder window breaks? Well it is Juliet and Braza has found a jewel for her Juliet in Piper Jean Bailey. A recent graduate of Northwestern University, this is Bailey’s Milwaukee Rep debut and first professional role. Bailey easily moves from the naive 14 year old that we first meet with her parents and quickly develops into a crush-worthy and crushing on Romeo teen during the Capulet’s party scene. But Bailey really brings the drama in the balcony scene and attendant soliloquies, she has a solid command of the Shakespearean text and story. And she is just the right amount of playful with Romeo and her nurse particularly through the planning of their wedding. She certainly knows how to play an excitable 14 year old and then cleanly morph into a young adult as the tragedy comes to a head. She was clearly the fan favorite as she received the loudest and warmest round of applause during the standing ovation. I will be shocked if we don’t see her again and again on the Rep stages in the future.
Romeo and Juliet runs through March 30, 2025. And while the Rep’s home is being remodeled, it is being presented in Vogel Hall of the Marcus Performing Arts Center. The entrance to Vogel Hall is on the riverwalk side of the MPAC just off of State Street. Additional information and tickets can be found here.
Extra credit reading: The Program