Add Your Review
My overall impression
This is the R & J Shakespeare wrote. Yes, the gender roles are reversed and the production strips away the ‘traditional’ trappings of the play, but if that shakes us out of our expectations, makes us pay attention—even with a “Show Me” attitude, it’s all to the good. As with Ellen Geer’s wonderful Queen Lear last summer at (which several in this company were part of) switching the genders challenges our assumptions, broadens our empathy, lets us hear the words.. and Oliver and Schneider especially, as Julian and Romea, succeed wonderfully in making the so-familiar speeches of their two lovers seem newly-thought, newly spoken, as if we are hearing them for the first time. It’s not easy, but they make it seem so. And that’s a rare gift.
