Fresh faces bring new passion to Shakespeare Tavern’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’

People familiar with the story may feel more inclined to protect these two giddy, naive and doomed children from their fate. New audiences, meanwhile, will relate to the young lovers, who are ably played by Tommy Sullivan-Lovett and Golbanoo Setayesh.

Credit: Photo by Jeff Watkins

Credit: Photo by Jeff Watkins

Here, the two characters seem younger and less prepared to face the harshness of the world. Though they are aware of their family’s feud, which causes violence on the streets of Verona, young Montague and Capulet lead sheltered lives at the play’s opening, him pining for a girl named Rosaline and her preparing for her 14th birthday.

And love is dangerous, fleeting. Passion has a price. And Romeo and Juliet are too eager for experience to begin. So they both go to that costume party, and they flirt precariously on that balcony. And no one really tells them how much it can hurt if you fall.

Sullivan-Lovett’s Romeo is all adolescent frustration and eager pining in the fun first act. First, the character is heartbroken and sulking, his voice breaking through puberty as he romanticizes new love perpetually. Setayesh has an enthusiastic speed in her line delivery, an excited spring in her step. The effect of both performers’ affectations is amazing, providing the whole half with a glee that comes with youth. They are funny and lively. The roles feel new.

This may emerge from the brilliant innovation of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s casting. Sullivan-Lovett, a transgender actor, and Setayesh, a first-generation American of Iranian descent, embrace their opportunities to tell this tale with fervor, and the energy is palpable.

The canon belongs to all of us, not just a privileged few, and young performers with new perspectives express feelings and ideas in diverse ways we all need to see. Shakespeare likely considered that in 1597 when he first appropriated this tale from its original Italian author and cast his team of White, cisgender male actors in every role on the stage. Innovation is the key to bringing new audiences to theater.

Credit: Photo by Jeff Watkins

Credit: Photo by Jeff Watkins

Also of note among the performers, Mila Bolash is having a blast as the saucy Nurse, more maternal and attentive to Juliet than the character’s own mother. Patrick Tansor brings a booming voice and tenderness to Friar Laurence, excited about his potions and experiments in a way that blinds the character to how bumbling and faulty some of his machinations are. As the chief confidantes and most complicit conspirators, the pair fare well.

Tyren Duncan’s fresh approach to Mercutio is very fun, full of swagger and then bitter spite. His delivery of the plague curse is great. And Sarah Hack does good work as Benvolio, who encourages Romeo toward calamity in the name of romance.

One scene of this production rings differently from other iterations, and it led to a new understanding of the characters’ stakes. After Romeo is banished from Verona in the wake of a bloody battle, Juliet is disowned by her brutal father, Lord Capulet — played by understudy O’Neil Delapenha in the performance attended for review — for not agreeing to marry the attractive yet silly Paris (Trevor Poli). The way the scene played, it underlined that the same ruinous punishments are delivered to the young couple after Romeo acts so impulsively. For a privileged young man to be destroyed, he must be cast from society, while a teenage girl can be just as destroyed by a whim.

In the second act, as the violent ends play out, the emotional peaks occur early, which gives performers not much variation to play within weeping histrionics. But, by then, we’re already invested.

The production is solid in its design, and the fresh faces in the cast, new to the Tavern, infuse the show with a new energy. It feels urgent. Though the story has been told before many times, this show has new passion.

THEATER REVIEW

“Romeo and Juliet” presented by Atlanta Shakespeare Company through March 3. Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, 499 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-874-5299, shakespearetavern.com

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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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