It’s difficult to know what to say about the version of “Romeo and Juliet” that opened last week at the Public Theatre. Directed by Les Waters, it boasts a camp Mercutio (Courtney B. Vance), a Nurse who appears to be brain-damaged (Anne Meara), a Chorus who does not seem to understand his lines (Harold J. Surratt), a petulant Romeo, and a Juliet who would not be out of place in a suburban shopping mail. One would like to be able to find something nice to say about the actors, many of whom have clearly worked hard, and some of whom give spirited performances; alas, the result of their efforts—under Mr. Waters’ guidance—is so inadequate that one almost can’t believe that Joe Papp is offering this production for serious consideration.
Among those who have perhaps worked hardest are Peter MacNicol and Cynthia Nixon, as the lovers. Mr. MacNicol, who played Stingo in the movie “Sophie’s Choice,” has more than once endeared himself to theatre audiences in roles of light comic pathos—as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in “Twelfth Night,” for instance, and as the briefcase-clicking lawyer in Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart.” His slight build and curiously high-pitched voice served him well in those roles; they are no asset to him as Romeo—any more than they were an asset when he undertook the role of Richard II last summer in Central Park. Since then, Mr. MacNicol has made progress with his voice, but Shakespeare’s language and poetry still have him at a loss, and he lacks tragic stature. Through all Romeo’s bleak turns of fortune, Mr. MacNicol looks merely as though he were out of a job. He pantomimes the imagery—taking a firebrand from an invisible passing servant on “She doeth teach the torches to burn bright!” and raising his arms on “Arise, fair sun”—and connects with the floor more often than he does with any of the other characters.
If Mr. MacNicol seems inappropriately cast as Romeo, his misplaced efforts are as nothing compared with those of Miss Nixon, who gives us a nagging, spoiled, and sexually voracious Juliet. In the past, Miss Nixon has specialized in playing vacuous contemporary young women—in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing,” in David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly,” and most recently, in the Second Stage revival of Michael Weller’s “Moonchildren.” (It’s worth noting that none of the characters she portrayed in these plays needed to be as uninteresting as she made them.) As Juliet, Miss Nixon is essentially a two-note performer, capable of registering happiness or distress: the one by yelling, the other by whining. She makes it easy to sympathize with old Capulet’s description of his daughter as “a wretched puling fool.” This is probably the first coarse Juliet on record: “Give me my Romeo,” Miss Nixon roars lustily, squeezing the air with upturned hands, as if she would like to goose him. Dismissing Romeo in the balcony scene—“’Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone”—she might be trying to break up a poker game.
The casting of two such limited actors verges on contempt. There has always been a strong undercurrent of contempt in the work of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Or boredom, if you like—with the audience and the material. In the past, though, the novelty of Papp’s populist approach—the idea of the rock musical, the multiracial casting, or the female Hamlet—was an effective diversion: it distracted attention from the inadequacy of the performances. In the current production of “Romeo and Juliet,” the contempt is thrown into relief by the presence of three very able actors: Michael Cumpsty, Rob Knepper, and Peter Francis James. Mr. Cumpsty and Mr. Knepper both gave bang-up “classical” performances earlier this year—Mr. Cumpsty as Octavius in the Roundabout’s production of “Man and Superman,” and Mr. Knepper as Lysander in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Mr. James was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Any one of them could have played Romeo to better effect than Mr. MacNicol, yet they are relegated here to the comparatively minor roles of the Prince, Tybalt, and Benvolio. It’s almost as though Joe Papp wanted to make Romeo look silly.
Other aspects of the production seem as perverse as the casting. Milo O’Shea, who re-creates his performance as Friar Lawrence from the 1968 Zeffirelli film, races through his lines as though he were trying to win a bet. The quartet of feuding parents (Neil Vipond, Janni Brenn, W.B. Brydon, and Randy Danson) are figures straight out of a “Beyond the Fringe” parody. The fights, directed by B.H. Barry, are better than some of Mr. Barry’s other recent work for the Festival has been; otherwise, the staging is ludicrous. Mercutio has an epileptic fit during the Queen Mab speech; Juliet paces her balcony, eyes heavenward, as though she were watching for enemy planes, and Friar Lawrence identifies Paris’s corpse in the dark from six feet away.
It’s easy to forget, when one has been exposed to too much Joe Papp Shakespeare, that plays like “Romeo and Juliet” can be thrillingly performed for a contemporary audience; but the fact is that they can—and by American actors. I recently saw Michael Langham’s wonderful “Merchant of Venice” at the Folger Theater, in Washington, and earlier this year Julie Taymor directed a delightful “Taming of the Shrew” for Theater for a New Audience. In February, a fire broke out in the building where Theater for a New Audience was performing, leaving the company homeless and on the verge of bankruptcy. It seems a shame that while companies willing and able to do justice to Shakespeare are crippled by want of financial support, so much money should be funneled into productions like this “Romeo.”
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, June 6, 1988