Liquid ecstasy

Trinity Rep gets Romeo and Juliet wet

by Carolyn Clay

ROMEO AND JULIET, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Brian Kulick. Set and costumes designed by Mark Wendland. Lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin. Choreography by Naomi Goldberg. Fight choreography by Normand Beauregard. With Barbara Meek, Brian McEleney, Doug Brandt, Ed Shea, Mark H. Dold, Tari Signor, and Eric Tucker. At Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, through May 24.

At Trinity Repertory Company, Romeo and Juliet looks like a cross between Phantom of the Opera and a baptism. The entire play is set in the Capulet crypt, which has a severe case of water in the basement. The end is the beginning; the beginning is the end; and among the significant dramatis personae who are MIA are the Prince of Verona and the County Paris. The cast consists of seven actors playing a dozen characters. Gothic, candlelit, and sloshing, the production is pretty radical, but much of it is very beautiful.

Director Brian Kulick and designer Mark Wendland are a frequent and talented team; during Kulick's two-year tenure as associate artistic director of Trinity Rep the pair collaborated on The Illusion, The Return of Don Quixote, and Fires in the Mirror. Last summer they concocted a well-received Timon of Athens for New York's Joseph Papp Public Theatre, of which Kulick is now artistic associate. The inspiration for this Romeo and Juliet -- which concentrates on the "violent delight" of the teenage lovers and on the role of fickle Fortune in their story -- is Dante's Paolo and Francesca in the second circle of Hell, doomed to repeat their story over and over again.

Thus, we begin with Romeo and Juliet, along with Mercutio and Tybalt, dead. Whereupon they are balletically -- and repeatedly -- resurrected to relive their tragedy. None of the actors leaves the stage; when not in a scene, everyone either sits and watches (the living) or sinks back into sleep (the dead). The several inches of water in which the stage is awash represents, presumably, the River Styx washing up on the shores of purgatory. The map of the heavens that forms the back wall of the playing space -- and that goes dark and twinkly with the descent of "loving, black-browed night" -- is a constant reminder that the lovers are "star-crossed."

Obviously there are problems with this kind of deconstruction. What Kulick and Wendland (who are also responsible for the production's effective sound design) offer is a highly atmospheric, even mystical, vision of the play that focuses intensely on Romeo and Juliet -- on the childlike ferocity of their poetry and passion, ably captured by Mark H. Dold and Tari Signor. But Baz Luhrmann, in his fast-moving shoot-'em-up of a film, sticks more conventionally to Shakespeare's play. Some of the English teachers who bring their high-schoolers to the production through Trinity's Project Discovery program may have to be carried out on gurneys. A great deal of cutting and some rearranging has taken place. The double (and, in one case, quadruple) casting can be confusing. And students depending on the production in lieu of reading the play will not do well on the test. On the other hand, those who have done their homework will learn how the Bard is ever changeable, ever new.

A distinct aura of ritual surrounds this Romeo and Juliet. But at the same time there is much in both the love and the fight scenes that is vigorous. From the beginning, when the reanimation rite erupts into the "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" squabble, the waterlogged brawls are exciting. Even between allies Romeo and Mercutio, there is a great deal of physical contact, roughhousing, and splashing. Juliet stays drier than most, but in Signor's characterization she's as fierce as a shark -- innocent, fetching, besotted, but capable of deep, railing anger (as when she turns on her Nurse for suggesting she just go ahead and marry Paris). And Dold conveys not just the rashness of his on-the-Rosaline-rebound character but also his tantrum-throwing intensity. Yet when the lovers are together, they seem infused with a delirious tenderness. There is sweetness in their heat.

Ed Shea plays Mercutio with less standard flamboyance than teasing mischief, making of "Queen Mab" a display of bravura delicacy. Eric Tucker is a threatening Tybalt, and Doug Brandt is aptly simple and watchful as the servants. Barbara Meek -- perhaps taking her cue from the line "These, griefs, these woes, these sorrows, make me old" -- underplays Juliet's Nurse (she's also Lady Capulet, which can get muddy). And Brian McEleney -- clad in a get-up of black leather apron, waders, and a World War I flier's helmet -- gets a real workout, playing Benvolio, Friar Laurence, the Apothecary, and a tyrannical Capulet. Everyone braves the waters, and the concept, well. But the real stars of this Romeo and Juliet, apart from the eponymous lovers, are the stunning design and direction.