I've just come home from the opening night of Bell Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. To say I was underwhelmed is a serious understatement. To say I was frustrated, bored, and insulted by John Bell's latest production is closer to the mark.
It's rare that I walk out of a play. I did so tonight, and I've had no qualms in doing so.
Having never seen a live production of Romeo and Juliet I hoped for a production of this play that evoked adolescent dreams, the instant passion of true love's aching desire, and a sense of tragedy.
I got none of this.
Instead, I saw a play that was over-directed, stagy, artificial and contrived. Ham-fisted and forced attempts at humour littered the production. Painfully obvious attempts to modernise the production were dropped in without reason. The poetry of the text was suffocated beneath mechanical and trite staging.
Case in point: the feud between the Capulets and Montagues was presented as antagonism between wogs and skips, but was done so in order to seem relevent without following through in any significant way.
Case in point: Mercutio, a character who can steal the show, was simply forced and annoying, while his death, which can be truly heartbreaking, was rushed and fumbled.
Both I, and my girlfriend Lisa found the production utterly frustrating.
Unless Bell can drastically change his style, which has become hackneyed, hidebound and predictable, the Bell Shakespeare Company will continue to post losses, such as its $400,000 loss last year, and continue to lose its audiences. Shakespeare can be passionate and relevent, but it sadly appears that, in John Bell's hands at present, it is neither.
3 comments:
I have said it before and I will say it again:
Bell is a piece of shit company that couldn't even stage an adequate "Shakespeare in the park" if it tried.
He manages to squeeze any sense of rhythm, any sense of dramatic tension, and eventually any sense of sense out of every play he touches
I wouldn't touch it with yours!
Yeah I agree. I took my family to see this exact performance a few years ago, but they had made Mercutio into a character supposed to resemble Vivian from the Young Ones. God it was painful. If we weren't sitting on a blanket in the park surrounded by bad actors, we would have walked out as well.
I will go this week. I am quite looking forward to it. Juliet is a ripping little actor and I am keen to see what sort of job she does.
I'm not entirely in the anti-Bell camp. I say kudos for consistently trying to find new ways of coming at the plays. While Measure for Measure was dullish (let's face it, it's a rubbish play), I thought Twelfth Night a couple of years ago was great. It was the first production I'd seen that actually hit how savagely cruel they are to Malvolio and how much it hurts him. Many productions gloss over this for yellow-stockinged laughs.
We'll see.
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