Cailtin Moran
staff writer
Parting from this performance of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is truly a sweet sorrow due to the creative efforts of the Dominican cast and crew. For two weekends, audiences filled the Lund Auditorium to treat themselves to this rendition of Shakespeare’s timeless romantic tragedy.
An open and minimal set design with few props or pieces of furniture funneled attention towards the actors—and deservedly so. Senior Melanie Thompson played an entrancing Romeo, dominating the space of the stage with her vigorously emotional delivery of dialogue.
Thompson also dominated all of her sword fight scenes. Quick on her feet with either a sword or knife, Thompson complemented her performance of drama’s most extravagant lover with a physically energetic edge.
Juliet, played by junior Mia Powell, matched the fast-paced passion of her Romeo. Powell delivered her lines at a breakneck tempo propelled by the frantic infatuation of first love. Though swift, the beauty and weight of the language never escaped the audience.
The fast-paced conviction with which Powell gave her lines lent a subtle fierceness to her love for Romeo, adding a dimension of independent strength to a character whose love could so easily be misconstrued as excessively dependent.
Romeo and Juliet first meet at a ball in the most skillfully choreographed scene of the production. Members and enemies of the Capulet court twirl in tandem with the music, circling the dance floor, all the while guiding Romeo and Juliet ever closer to one another.
Time stops when the lovers-to-be conjoin hands: The music slows, the lights dim, and the other dancers pause. Romeo shares soft, enamored smiles with the awed Juliet. The audience knows that a tragically true love has been discovered.
This centuries-old romance regains a level of modernity through designer Becca Duff’s costume choices, which blurred the lines between masculinity and femininity. Actors wore corsets with pants, pants under skirts, skirts with masculine hairstyles.
The genderfluid costuming and all-female casting portrayed the universal truths of “Romeo and Juliet” more intensely because those choices allowed the production to transcend arbitrary divisions such as gender.
Ultimately, the tragedy in “Romeo and Juliet” does not lie in the rushed passion between two lovers, but in the ancient contempt between two families who try to suppress that affection. The punishment that blind hatred inflicts upon unabashed love affects humans across boundaries of gender, race, age, and sexual orientation.
By eliminating these boundaries through casting and costuming choices, Dominican’s production reveals the common humanity found wherever hatred oppresses the purest of loves.
cmoran@my.dom.edu