Dance, athleticism, and swordplay share the stage with sonnets, bawdy wit, and soul-searching speeches in this profoundly human and always surprising masterpiece. The American Shakespeare Center recovers the joys and accessibility of Shakespeare’s theatre and gives its audiences some of the pleasures that an Elizabethan playgoer would have enjoyed: universal lighting, doubling of parts, fun with gender confusion, minimal sets, familiar costumes, and the use of music throughout.
Co-presented with the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies.
Tuesday, November 3
Bowker Auditorium 7:30 PM
$20, Five College/GCC/STCC students and Youth 17 and under: $10
Excellent interpretation of the classic Shakespeare with a twist. The event was fun for the family and entertaining to all types of audiences.
Excellent interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. A good idea to play it without an intermission. But the song and dance and audience participation before the show was pretty awful.
The performance started at exactly 7:30. I was in my seat and ready, but half the audience wasn’t. My enyoment of the prologue and scene 1 was marred by latecomers taking their seats, conversing with friends, finding their seats, etc.
Every FAC event I’ve ever attended (and that’s a lot) has started 10 minutes late. Audiences have come to expect this, so they never arrive on time. You can’t start a performance on time when audiences have been trained to expect 10 minutes grace.
I enjoyed the American Shakespeare performance, realizing that this abbreviated, updated version may be what is needed to appeal to the modern audiences. However, I quite agree with Sunny’s comment, above, about the horrid prelude to the performance. It almost made my friend and me leave, as we thought it was evidence of the low quality of the play to follow. Fortunately, we stayed and the main performance was very good. However, I hope that “modern” audiences can still be reached with ALL of the Bard’s beautiful language kept intact, and hope the Renaissance Center will offer that, from time to time. Marybeth