A review of “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”
“ The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”, written by William Shakespeare and directed by Raphael Massie was performed in Edgerton Park in New Haven, on Friday September 1st. The story begins in Verona Italy, where two feuding families live. These two families are the Montagues and the Capulets. In the beginning there is a street fight between the two families and the prince declares that whoever starts the next fight will be killed. Romeo is distraughtly in love with a girl named Rosaline, his cousins, who see how upset he is bring him to crash a Capulet party. At this party Romeo meets Juliet and they fall madly in love even though their families are feuding. Later in the night, Romeo sneaks into Juliet's garden and they agree to marry in secret. Romeo persuades Friar Lawrence to officiate, and the two are married in secret. Later that day, Juliet’s cousins challenges Romeo to a fight, when he refuses Juliet’s cousin murders Romeo’s cousin. Out of anger Romeo kills Juliet's cousin and Romeo is banished from Verona. After this, Juliet's parents insist that she marries Paris, and at this point she runs to Friar Lawrence and he gives her a drink that will make her look dead. He then promises to inform Romeo of the plan. After Juliet fakes her death, Romeo gets the wrong message and believes she is actually dead. Romeo then gets a poison cause he can not go on without her. He goes into where she is buried and drinks all of the poison. Juliet then wakes up to see her husband is dead and she stabs herself to be with him. When the families discover the secret romance and the suicide, they agree to stop the violence before someone else gets hurt.
The production team made a lot of choices when it came to staging and set design. For example, the color of the costumes. All the Montagues were wearing orange and all of the Capulets were wearing blue. The production team did this to make it easier for the audience to understand who the characters are. The next choice the made was how the lighting was going to affect the mood. When the lighting was more of an orange or a yellow it was a happier scene. When the lighting had blue tones to it would be a sadder seen. This helped the audience predict how the scene would play out and would give some idea of where the scene would go. The third choice that the production team made was how the set could be multi purpose. The set went from being the streets of Verona, to the homes of the families, to the place Juliet and Romeo were buried. The production team chose sets that could work as any of these things without having to undergo major changes. For example, when the went underground into the burial, they changes the gate to a metal gate and changed the lighting. Production did this to reduce the amount of time spent in blackouts and to decrease the runtime of the show., The final choice production made was how to show the importance of Romeo and Juliet. They did this by making their costumes very different from the others while stilling including the colors of their families. These two characters were also the only characters that changed their outfits and hairstyles throughout the play. There were many choices made by production, but those are the major ones I notices.
The actor that I thought was Gracy Brown who played the nurse. I believe that this actor was the best because you could really see her own personality shining through her character. I also believe she used her voice very well to add comedic value to the lines she was saying. An example from the play is when she talked to Juliet about her love for Romeo. In this science she makes the audience laugh because of how she uses her voice to expression sarcasm. She also uses her face very well to express her feelings. This is why I believe Gracy Brown was the best actor in the play.
In my personal opinion I did not like this play. I thought the transitions with pop music ruined the mood that the actors were trying to persuade. I also thought that it was very long and the fight scenes were too slow to look anywhere near real. I also believe that many of the actors were over acting for example Juliet's father was always being very loud but at some points that was not needed. In the end I did learn a lot about theater. For example, I saw how the fight scenes came together because of how early we arrived. I also got to see how many people it took to put a play together. Overall, this play had some good choices but the bad choices that were made affected my opinion of the play.
“ The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”, written by William Shakespeare and directed by Raphael Massie was performed in Edgerton Park in New Haven, on Friday September 1st. The story begins in Verona Italy, where two feuding families live. These two families are the Montagues and the Capulets. In the beginning there is a street fight between the two families and the prince declares that whoever starts the next fight will be killed. Romeo is distraughtly in love with a girl named Rosaline, his cousins, who see how upset he is bring him to crash a Capulet party. At this party Romeo meets Juliet and they fall madly in love even though their families are feuding. Later in the night, Romeo sneaks into Juliet's garden and they agree to marry in secret. Romeo persuades Friar Lawrence to officiate, and the two are married in secret. Later that day, Juliet’s cousins challenges Romeo to a fight, when he refuses Juliet’s cousin murders Romeo’s cousin. Out of anger Romeo kills Juliet's cousin and Romeo is banished from Verona. After this, Juliet's parents insist that she marries Paris, and at this point she runs to Friar Lawrence and he gives her a drink that will make her look dead. He then promises to inform Romeo of the plan. After Juliet fakes her death, Romeo gets the wrong message and believes she is actually dead. Romeo then gets a poison cause he can not go on without her. He goes into where she is buried and drinks all of the poison. Juliet then wakes up to see her husband is dead and she stabs herself to be with him. When the families discover the secret romance and the suicide, they agree to stop the violence before someone else gets hurt.
The production team made a lot of choices when it came to staging and set design. For example, the color of the costumes. All the Montagues were wearing orange and all of the Capulets were wearing blue. The production team did this to make it easier for the audience to understand who the characters are. The next choice the made was how the lighting was going to affect the mood. When the lighting was more of an orange or a yellow it was a happier scene. When the lighting had blue tones to it would be a sadder seen. This helped the audience predict how the scene would play out and would give some idea of where the scene would go. The third choice that the production team made was how the set could be multi purpose. The set went from being the streets of Verona, to the homes of the families, to the place Juliet and Romeo were buried. The production team chose sets that could work as any of these things without having to undergo major changes. For example, when the went underground into the burial, they changes the gate to a metal gate and changed the lighting. Production did this to reduce the amount of time spent in blackouts and to decrease the runtime of the show., The final choice production made was how to show the importance of Romeo and Juliet. They did this by making their costumes very different from the others while stilling including the colors of their families. These two characters were also the only characters that changed their outfits and hairstyles throughout the play. There were many choices made by production, but those are the major ones I notices.
The actor that I thought was Gracy Brown who played the nurse. I believe that this actor was the best because you could really see her own personality shining through her character. I also believe she used her voice very well to add comedic value to the lines she was saying. An example from the play is when she talked to Juliet about her love for Romeo. In this science she makes the audience laugh because of how she uses her voice to expression sarcasm. She also uses her face very well to express her feelings. This is why I believe Gracy Brown was the best actor in the play.
In my personal opinion I did not like this play. I thought the transitions with pop music ruined the mood that the actors were trying to persuade. I also thought that it was very long and the fight scenes were too slow to look anywhere near real. I also believe that many of the actors were over acting for example Juliet's father was always being very loud but at some points that was not needed. In the end I did learn a lot about theater. For example, I saw how the fight scenes came together because of how early we arrived. I also got to see how many people it took to put a play together. Overall, this play had some good choices but the bad choices that were made affected my opinion of the play.
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