Romeo and Juliet Review

The name of the play was Romeo and Juliet.  It was written by Shakespeare, but directed by Raphael Massie.  I went to see the play September first at Edgerton park in New Haven.  The play was about the love story of Romeo and Juliet.  The two main Characters Romeo and Juliet were played by Steven Johnson(Romeo) and Courtney Jamison(Juliet). The story is about Romeo and Juliet falling in love but it would never work out.  This is due to the feud between the two families.  Their forbidden love leads multiple fights and multiple people dying including themselves.  One of the fights leads to Romeo being banished.  That leads to Juliet almost killing herself, but instead she goes to the fryer who gives her a sleeping potion.  When Romeo finds her he thinks she is dead so he drinks poison and dies next to her.  Then she wakes up to see him dead which makes her kill herself.  When they are found together the truth comes out that they were in love and the two families realizing that their feud had caused the deaths of their children, so they decide to resolve their issues which is when the play ended.  Some of the major themes from this story was love, death, and secrecy.  The theme for love is expressed through the undying love between Romeo and Juliet.  They were willing to die for each other because they loved each other so much.  The theme for death was shown when Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio, Romeo, and lastly with Juliet.  Tybalt killed Mercutio which lead to Romeo killing her.  Then toward the end Romeo also killed Benvolio when he attacked him because he thought that Romeo was trying to disgrace Juliet's grave.  Then Romeo thought that Juliet had killed herself when she took the sleeping potion so he killed himself by drinking poison.  When Juliet woke up and saw that Romeo had killed himself she decided to kill herself by staying herself.  Then the theme of secrecy came from how Romeo and Juliet had to keep their love a secret from their parents to to the hated between the two families.  

The stage was made to look like multiple places. These are open area for walking, a part to a house, a garden, a street, and in the end a graveyard. In order for them to make the stage look like a graveyard they made it dark, they had people holding fire, and they put a gate up. The two main characters Romeo and Juliet both wore clothes from modern society. While everyone else such as fryer John wore clothes worn in the time that this play takes place. It was interesting because they had a color scheme for the two families. The Capulets wore blue clothing except for the father. While the Montague wore mostly red clothing. I liked how they would change the lighting for different times like at night they made the lights a blue to show that it was dark outside, but then when it was day they made the lights bright to symbolize like the sun is shining on them. They highlighted Romeo and Juliet by having them on stage for almost the entire play and considering the play is about their love story it made them seem pretty important. They made fryer john and Lawrence both seem very similar because they both were fryers. They also made the servants very similar by having them doing the same thing.

In my opinion the actor who did the best at playing his role was Steven Johnson who played Romeo. I felt that he did a good job of showing his love for Juliet. He had a lot of lines that he had to memorize and I feel that he did a great job with memorizing them I can't think of a time where he messed up something. He made this character successful because he played Romeo great. Like when he had to kill himself I feel like he did a great job of acting like he was dying.

My opinion about this play was that it was very well planned and the actors did a great job of playing their characters. I enjoyed the play because I thought that it was interesting between the fighting scenes but then they also had love scenes which gave it a good variety. I learned that theater takes a lot of work and it is very hard to convert what you have been practicing especially when you have a audience.