The Venetian city Verona is depicted on a mural as a gray and empty plaza of cobblestones surrounded by renaissance palazzi with a fountain at center, a “WET PAINT” sign has been irreverently taped to the mural. There is commotion heard from behind a curtain on stage left, and five actors, dressed in breeches and hose, barrel out on top of a large wooden chest on wheels. As they rise to their feet they become the chorus delivering the prologue to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and it’s quickly understood: This story will not be “two hours’ traffic of our stage” but a very fast-paced one!
Romeo and Juliet is such a fixture of American education, popular culture, and the theatergoing experience that one can assume a basic familiarity: A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, etc. etc. Better, instead, to focus on what is distinctive about each new staging—how much a new telling affirms or upends the interpretations we have absorbed over the years.
Faction of Fools’ commedia dell’arte version of Romeo and Juliet at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, will upend the conventional interpretation of the play as a tragic romance. Originating in 16th-century Italy, commedia emphasized masked performance, physical comedy, and slapstick. These comedians toured throughout Europe, even to Tudor England, so it is little coincidence that Shakespeare set most of his comedies in the Italian city-states. In her notes, Faction of Fools’ co-artistic director Kathryn Zoerb, who helms this remounting of the company’s 2012 production, quotes her predecessor, Fools’ founding artistic director Matthew R. Wilson: “Romeo and Juliet is a comedy, except when it isn’t.”
This is not your middle school English teacher’s “story of more woe.”
This comedy concept is emphasized by the fact that the current revival, like the original staging, is played by a cast of five actors, or more precisely, two casts of five actors apiece—named for the “two households, both alike in dignity.” I saw the Capulet cast as a Saturday matinee, and the Montague cast that evening. The small casts requires actors to suddenly change masks, throw on (or take off) a skirt, cape, or apron, or alter their posture and gait as they switch characters mid-scene.
An example: The sword fight between Mercutio (Mary Myers or Robert Pike) and Tybalt (co-artistic director Francesca Chilcote or Natalie Cutcher) becomes increasingly ridiculous as Romeo (Max Johnson or Travis Xavier Brown) and Benvolio (Ben Lauer or Deimoni Brewington) attempt to break up the fight using weight-bearing partner acrobatics (choreographed by Rachel Spicknall Mulford). Still, the audience silences its laughter when Tybalt’s sword plunges into Mercutio, who utters the famous curse, “a plague o’ both your houses.” Both Myers and Pike go from the broadest of comedy to the deepest of tragedy on a ducat. That silence carries as Romeo avenges his friend’s murder.
But the comedy returns quickly: With only a cast of five, the production can’t afford to have an actor playing a corpse for more than a few minutes before they are substituted with a floppy cloth dummy. Likewise, this approach underlines the ridiculousness of the plans hatched by the Nurse (Lauer or Brewington) and Friar Laurence (Chilcote or Cutcher) on behalf of our star-crossed lovers, whereas these two characters are so often portrayed as responsible adults giving wise counsel to the youth of Verona.
It is fascinating to see the differences between Fools’ two casts when the script, pacing, choreography, and visual gags remain the same. Bri Houtman’s Juliet (in the Capulet cast) is more of a romantic ingenue while Jasmine Proctor’s is more lusty. Brown’s Romeo (also in the Capulet cast) is moody but smooth, while Johnson’s is more prone to self-doubt. And while both Lauer and Brewington are hilarious giving a campy drag performance of Juliet’s nurse, Brewington is a bit sassier. The Montague cast’s Myers and Chilcote are perhaps the more balletic pair of swashbucklers.
Scenic designer Johnny Weissgerber has created a wonderfully ingenious prop for this remounting—the wheeled chest that the ensemble enters on, breaks down into six additional boxes that can be built into pedestals or a wedding altar once the top is removed. The chassis itself is easily broken down to provide Romeo with a skateboard. Even more remarkable is the cast’s ability to keep track of the individual boxes as they are constantly being rearranged—each contains masks, bouquets, vials of poison, and dolls, which must be pulled out at precise moments in the action.
Many theater companies claim to reimagine the classics, but when Faction of Fools does its commedia dell’arte versions of classic plays, they do not merely add slapstick and inventive ensemble work, nor find an approach that just happens to work well: They uncover that which has been buried for centuries under the edifice of classical theater: Tradition is not a true restaging of the original.
Thankfully, area theatergoers are also gifted with other ensembles that take unique approaches to classic stories, as next month, Synetic Theater will be staging their own take on Romeo and Juliet, which will no doubt be as different from Faction of Fools’ interpretation as either will be from a more traditional staging.
Faction of Fools Theatre Company’s A Commedia Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare and directed by Kathryn Zoerb, runs through Feb. 3 at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. factionoffools.org. $15–$35.