Shakespeare in The Park

Personally, I don’t have strong feelings toward Shakespeare one way or another. I think he has an important place in history and undoubted influence on our cultural metaconsciousness; I like his plays when they’re translated by Pasternak, which probably speaks more to Pasternak’s linguistic abilities than Shakespeare’s; and I find him hard to digest in the original form – he is definitely beyond my level of enjoyable comprehension of English. As such, I put Shakespeare in the same category as Picasso – I can appreciate their art and its cultural significance, but I don’t aesthetically enjoy most of what they do. However, this trip revealed both of these artists in a new light for me, but I’ll stick to Shakespeare for now.

We wanted to see the famous Shakespeare in The Park that stages shows in New York’s Central Park every summer. This season they actually had Al Pacino as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice – my favorite original Shakespeare play. But no luck – they finished the season before we got to NYC. I looked around and found several alternatives, one of which was The Other Shakespeare in The Park by the Hudson Warehouse troupe. They were doing a month of Romeo and Juliet to close out the season, and the production got interesting reviews. It was free, it was in a park (Riverside, not Central, but who cares), and so we went.

The whole production was set on a small stage facing the back patio and steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, where the audience set on cushions provided by the theater. The actors changed right on the walkway path directly “off-stage,” so that you could always see what’s going on “behind the scenes”. There wasn't much for decorations and props, and the darkness had fallen way before the play was over, which means that the last hour or so was performed in the light of street lamps around the monument. Oh, and it’s noisy. There is a throughway just a few blocks to the west with some loud NY traffic, sirens and helicopters; and on top of that, the actors didn't have any means of projecting, aside from their own voices. This maked the whole enterprise even more, shell we say, interesting: there’s about 50% comprehension rate for the text on a good day, when you’re sitting at home with a book in one hand and a dictionary/wiki in the other, but now you’re essentially down to barely getting it. And that means that you must fill in the blanks with what you remember from your previous encounters with R&J and what the actors manage to emote on stage. So basically, everything was working against the play, and all you have to rely on is how good the actors are and how good what they have to work with is.

Now, Romeo and Juliet is probably one of the most done-to-death, reimagined-to-death, silly, and over-hyped Shakespearean plays I can think of. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the story (or at least its derivative) by heart, can recite some lines, if not whole verses, but probably fail to find much depth and novelty in any of it. At least, that’s my take on it. Or it has been until now…

This particular production was set in modern day Afghanistan, with Romeo and his posse dressed as American soldiers, and Juliet and the rest of the Capulet clan portrayed as a rich Afghan family.

The fact that it was modernized, set in present time and reflected current events wasn’t unique to this production – after all, if you want to see a “hip” modern-day interpretation of the play, just rent the one with Leo and Claire. What did set it apart for me was that the actors treated the play as something that could actually happen between a young soldier stationed in a foreign country and an even younger local girl who falls for him. I have to say, the acting of these two was impeccable – sincere, compelling, and appropriately emotional. I saw a boy dressed in fatigues and a wife-beater, chain-smoking, and telling his buddies that he saw this beautiful girl and that he’s in love. And his buddies were laughing at him and telling him that he’s an idiot.

I saw a girl infatuated with a good-looking, forward guy, saying things that were awkward and a tad foolish. The best moment that epitomized this naturalistic approach to the play came when Juliet tells Romeo “Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing” and Romeo mouths “What??” (not an actual line in the play) with an amused bewilderment. No pretence that each word must have a profound psychological or literary meaning, no attempt to act out every line – just a very down-to-earth reaction to something a silly girl might say that most likely has no real depth to it. I believed the actors. I believed their feelings, even if I didn’t hear, understand, or care for the words themselves.

And then there was the ending. I honestly don’t know how anyone can play that last scene of death with a straight face anymore. Seriously! They die. It’s stupid. Period. I could never buy the pathos and tragedy of that ending – there is no divine plan, there is no fate, just unbelievable and contrived results of miscommunications and missed opportunities. And this production wasn’t any more profound in its last breaths. Until the final couple of lines… I’ve read the play before. I’ve seen it staged and filmed before. I know how it ends. But I think I never got the main point of it. It didn’t stand out until I saw two groups of people – American soldiers and an Afghan family – grieving over the bodies of their own. It isn’t about the tragedy of young love. It’s about stupidity of their deaths brought about by a conflict between two feuding clans. I always thought that the animosity between Capulets and Montagues was there to create the fatal outcome for the tragic love story. During this performance, I realized that this animosity was the main point. The love and death of Romeo and Juliet were meant to emphasize the emptiness, pointlessness, and destructiveness of the conflict, war. Or at least, that’s how I choose to see it now.