Romeo and Juliet

If Romeo and Juliet are portrayed as a pair of star crossed puppies, as they are in the Quincy House production, one may coo at their love scenes and pity them when they die, but they can inspire no greater emotion than puppies do. Life goes out of the play when its one full blooded character, Mercutio, dies, and we are left with what is at best a pretty little play, one that merely hints at tragedy.

Lisa Commager is a beautiful Juliet. At the beginning of the play she tries too hard to be a thirteen year old so that when she becomes a woman at the end of the play, the change is rather a shock. But she has some wonderful moments and is one of the few actors on the stage who never sacrifics the meaning of her lines to their poetry. Joel Crothers as Romeo has but two strings to his harp: he either smiles the ingenuous smile of a toothpaste advertisement or pouts like a child denied his lollypop. The volume of his voice occasionally rises, but instead of the anger or anguish which should pour out at those moments, there comes merely a trickle of peevishness.

Mercutio, who bears the weight of the play upon his shoulders, is played by John Parker. He makes a valiant try, perhaps too valiant, for most of his energy seems undirected and wasted. And something must be done about his braying, villainous laugh. I know that rough edges are inevitable in a production cast almost entirely from one House but it is nonetheless a pity that one of them had to be Benvolio (Donald Scharfe). His announcement of Mercutio's death, one of the play's most poignant moments, he turns into a moment of near comedy. "Mercutio is dead," he says, without the hint of emotion in his voice. So what?

A few of the minor parts, on the other hand, are very nicely played. Steve Aaron hams his way through the role of Papa Scapulet with such obvious pleasure at being on a stage, milking every line and pausing before every exit as though he couldn't bear to leave, that one can't help but enjoy his performance. Spyro Harbouris plays Friar Lawrence as a deadpan Italian cobbler, and for one delightful moment Philip Stone totters on stage and then stumbles off as Friar John. Beatrice Paipert is not nearly disgusting enough as the nurse, but at least she laughs and weeps with admirable gusto.

Nathaniel Frothingham, the director, and Todd Lee, the see designer are both to be congratulated--as heartily for what they neglected to do as for what they did. Frothingham did not encumber the play with useless "business" in order to keep the audience "interested." His first effort was always to get across the meaning of the lines, and he was right in assuming that the play itself was enough to hold one's attention. When there is action on stage, as in the dueling scenes, if it is never quite convincing, it is at least not ludicrous. Lee's set was simple, even elegant, a very good approximation of Elizabethan conditions. Modern-ness was reduced to the necessities, like lighting and a few silly stools that people kept dragging in.

It was a House production; the cast had fun; even if the audience was never pushed to the heights of its emotions, at least it was convinced that being an adolescent in Elizabethan England was no easier than it is nowadays.