The best part about the Globe’s Wild West production of the comedy of Romeo and Juliet was the line-dancing after the final curtain. They company had previewed the hoe-down during the Capulet ball, with Romeo and his buddies wearing masks, but the production was still feeling its way in its early moments. By the end, with blood on the costumes of the slain, having worked all the way through the nearly three hours traffic of our stage, everybody was in a good mood. Abdul Sessay’s Romeo was smiling, Lola Shalam’s Juliet kicking up her heels. After a production that put more into the comic notes than just about any Romeo and Juliet I’ve seen, this felt like the right closer.
It was a great ending to a mixed production.
Did the dancing and the comedy detract a bit from the tragic reach of the show? Yes – but I’ve seen a lot of all-tragic versions of this play, and I must say I enjoyed this alternative.
The Wild West setting, complete with sixguns and a banjo/fiddle band in the upper stage, was good fun, though perhaps there was a sense in which we were asked to remember that the myth of the American West always includes lots of violence, especially with guns. It did seem pointed that, though much of the stage combat involved knives, Romeo killed both Tybalt and Paris with a pistol. (Mercutio and Juliet are slain with knives.)
The best showman of the cast was probably Colm Gormley as Capulet, who clearly loved to play host and lead the dancing. Roman Asde’s Benvolio, who also voiced the Preface, was in some ways more engaging than Michael Elcock’s stage-hogging Mercutio. Perhaps a production that steered the tragic story toward comedy prefered the character named good well (Ben-volio) to the blazing Mercutio?
Sessay’s Romeo showed the lover as young and enthusiastic, and at times he appeared to give the sort of faux-Americana impression that Timothee Chalamet presents via the young waifish Bob Dylan. This Romeo seemed always to enjoy being in love, even as he smoothly shifted from Rosaline to Juliet.
Shalam’s Juliet had the best lines in the play, and although I enjoyed her energy, I’ve rarely heard a less powerful version of the “Come, night” soliloquy that opened the second act. She was much stronger as a dancer and when performing her artless enthusiasm for her newfound love – “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” she says as if discovering something, “The more I have, the more I give, for both / Are infinite.” It’s a good line.
The brutal final moments of this play would seem to be a challenge for this comic vision. The ghosts of Mercutio and Tybalt come out and sit onstage for the final tableau, and Paris and Romeo, after their deaths, each stand up and contribute to the action in their afterlives. The result is an affecting partial recreation of the group dance at the Capulet ball, this time with ghosts.
Even the very final minutes returned to dancing. After Juliet in her little girl voice reproached Reomeo for leaving her no poison, his shade stood up, smiled, and held out a knife. Juliet drew him close as if to start another dance, and the dagger came between them. It was a shrewd and powerful way to allow the lovers, who die seperately in the play, to bring themselves together. Their ghosts also returned to speak the closing lines about “Juliet and her Romeo.”
A lively play with some interesting ideas and new faces in the cast!