Romance is Fleeting. Ask Out Your Crush.
“In fair Verona, where we lay our scene…”
In reality, we lay our scene at ACT Theatre in Seattle. And reality struck again when I entered the theater and I wasn’t immediately transported to Italy — in fact, with purplish-red lighting, chain-link fences leaned up against the walls, an eerie song I’m pretty sure was in the ending credits of a Stranger Things episode playing, and actors in police costumes pacing up and down the aisles with flashlights to examine theater-goer’s faces, I was convinced that I was nowhere near Italy in the 1300s.
Through my confusion, all I could take away from the odd setting was that this version of Romeo and Juliet was going to have a very particular aesthetic, and I was frankly pretty excited about it. It felt uncomfortable and disquieting, which was fitting. Romeo and Juliet is tragic; it’s about suicide and murder and hatred… and love among loathing.
We took our seats around the circular stage with our programs in hand. When I opened mine, I had one name I was most excited to see on the cast list: Joshua Castille as Romeo.
I’ve been a fan of Joshua Castille since I saw him as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame at 5th Ave last spring — he’s incredible. He’s been in Deaf West’s Spring Awakening and even performed at the Tony Awards. Also, he follows my little sister on Instagram, and I’m on her Instagram, so… I guess Joshua and I are best friends?
I was also there to see Gabriella O’Fallon as Juliet. She knows my older sister, because they’ve done productions together at Lakeside (where she graduated from just last year… and she already has a very impressive resume).
Beyond the two leads, I wasn’t familiar with any of the other nine actors. And yes, ACT continued their long tradition of having small casts in which each actor played multiple characters. And frankly, I thought switching between characters would confuse me, but costume changes and the actors’ abilities to switch their dialect and tone so quickly left no confusion in distinguishing between characters.
Since ACT’s stage is so small (and round), the set was completely immersive. Actors entered from the lobby, stood in the audience, and even interacted with certain audience members (providing slightly relieving comedic moments among the angst of the show). The only challenge provided by this unique way of putting on a show was that the actors sometimes didn’t face the audience members — which, as annoying as it is in any regular old show, was particularly hard to watch because the show was performed not only in words, but in American sign language.
Two of the cast members are talented deaf performers — Joshua Castille as Romeo and Howie Seago as Friar Lawrence. Each performance is supported by two ASL interpreters for deaf audience members, and most lines in the show are signed. In fact, it’s even written into the show that Romeo is deaf; in a letter writing scene, the language was slightly altered to show Juliet attempting to learn bits of sign language in order to communicate with her lover. These small details not only made the show more interesting, but far more inclusive for a wide variety of audience members to enjoy the show.
The time period the story took place in was never explained, but Juliet’s introduction displays not only bits of the more modern time period but also her youth. In the story, Juliet is only thirteen, which is perfectly portrayed in her first onstage sequence, during which she dances to a loud Lady Gaga song from headphones connected to her cellphone. Throughout the show, she moves, acts, and whines like a teenage girl — an interesting way to portray the character, especially in the very mature situations she is placed in.
Beyond the interesting portrayals and changes made to the show, director John Lang’s production of the famous tragedy stuck to its roots; it was tragic.
I’m big enough to admit I cried — frankly, I cry a lot and was expecting it, but the deaths were not surprising or shocking. It’s Romeo and Juliet, after all. We all know the story as the first of the now famous (and maybe overused?) “forbidden love” trope. It’s in West Side Story and Moonrise Kingdom and hell, Brokeback Mountain. It’s literally everywhere across every form of media in every corner of Netflix and in every nook of every library. But something about this, dare I say, old-fashioned forbidden love story made it seem completely new.
Chemistry.
Castille and O’Fallon definitely had it. Castille’s Instagram story definitely displays their close friendship offstage, which may have made the lovey-dovey bits of their onstage relationship a bit easier (versus pretending to be in love with an acquaintance — that’s a bit awkward). Their romance was sweet and passionate and every moment onstage their eyes were on each other only. A romance that started in a burst of breathless light and expired in a flash of impulse. It makes me wonder if anyone’s ever loved each other so much that love at first sight was that real.
I like to believe in love — and that the message of the story isn’t about vanity. I like to believe that “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” And if that (love) was what the story was about (real, unchanging, unconditional love) than the pair’s death was all the more tragic.
Because maybe that proves that something you love so much can be destroyed in an instant. It only takes a split second. And we see that a lot, not in our lives (perhaps in our own lives, at times) but on the news and in stories. And we think that it’s sad, but silently thank God it wasn’t us that lost a person so unfairly and prematurely, but hell, it could be. You literally never know.
So ask out your crush and tell your mom you love her. Say those things, and mean it, and don’t regret, because life really is short and lots of people don’t realize how much love they have in their lives but it’s there.
The play did make me realize how much I appreciate Shakespeare — and also, the creativity that goes into modernizing and adding interesting touches to the old stories that are so well known. I knew everything that was going to happen in the play, but I was never once bored.
Romeo and Juliet closes at ACT on March 31st. Snag tickets if you’re cool — it’s completely and utterly worth it.
Bring tissues because, well, “never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
