Joel Petrie's production of Romeo and Juliet was really, really good. I went and saw it last night and I have to say it was worth both the drive to the UVSC Wasatch Campus (!) and the $6 they charged me at the door. According to the credits, I was the assistant director and they still charged me $6 and I still feel it was worth it. (in fact, the picture above is from the scene I did the camera work for)
Joel put together an incredible mix of stage and screen to recreate Shakespeare's play to chilling effect.
I'll admit it. It made me cry a little. But not the actual ending type normal stuff you'd expect, but it was actually Mercutio's death that seemed to me to be the most emotional moment in the play. Part of it was that the girl that played Mercutio (you read that right, she's pictured above) was really, really good. I would go so far as to say she had my favorite performance in the entire piece.
But Mercutio being a girl and the play being a mix of film and stage acting isn't the only thing Joel does to retell the story and it's the way he does it that makes this play fresh to me after so many years of knowing it. At one point, Joel had mentioned to me a way in which he futzed with the structure to maintain "the cliffhanger of Romeo's death" and I told him that there hadn't been anyone affected by a cliffhanger presented in Romeo and Juliet in three hundred years. But the fact that I was sitting, literally, on the edge of my chair with tears in my eyes at more than a couple of points during the play speaks to the enduring quality of Shakespeare's words and the ingenuity of my buddy and good friend, Joel Petrie.
I would highly recomend you go out of your way to see it. If my schedule permits, I'm going to do my damndest to see it again.
As a taste: Here's the Apothecary scene from the film. It's creepy as shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment