Excerpts of Reviews

“ROMEO AND JULIET: ANTEBELLUM NEW ORLEANS, 1836”

The Theatre@Boston Court

Reviewed By Steven Mikulan

The Theater@Boston Court’s inaugural production is a hip-gyrating, feverish Romeo and Juliet unequivocally announcing the arrival of a major new venue for local theater. Subtitled Antebellum New Orleans, 1836, the story has been moved by director Michael Michetti to that city’s French Quarter three decades after the Louisiana Purchase. Michetti presents a worldly port town increasingly polarized between native Catholic Creoles who live in the Quarter and arriviste Anglo-Saxon Protestants who are challenging their commercial and political power. The concept plays nicely into the tragic romance’s Capulet-Montague rivalry, the stakes of which are raised here by the families’ racial makeup, with the Caucasian Romeo (Jason Van Over) wooing Franco-African Juliet (Tessa Thompson).

Part of this show’s joy is watching just how Michetti makes Shakespeare’s Veronese potboiler simmer with a Cajun flavor, how seamlessly the production melds eras and geographies. This is an especially difficult task because he isn’t merely grafting a Renaissance classic onto a time that’s closer and more familiar to our own, but also onto a setting that will be equally as alien to most people. Michetti doesn’t stop there, however. He layers on some Gothic weather in the form of Marie Laveau, New Orleans’ mythic voodoo priestess and apothecary who trance-dances during scene blackouts, before selling Romeo the “mortal drug” that will send him from this world.

In this wrought-iron blend of Shakespeare and Anne Rice, the Capulets, Montagues and their allies inhabit a Mardi Gras season of costume balls, open-air markets, crypts and bayous — all brought to full-dimensional life by a talented cast and design team. Scenic designer Tom Buderwitz, in a strategy reminiscent of early Pacific Theater Ensemble shows like Slaughterhouse on Tanner’s Close and The Beggars’ Opera, employs flying scaffolds that act as building fronts and balconies. This use of vertical space solves many problems of the relatively small stage and allows for an airy and kinetic balcony scene between the lovers. Alex Jaeger’s sumptuous costumes lend a dreamy tone to the intoxicating milieu, while Dan Weingarten’s light plot captures the nocturnal moodiness Michetti insists upon.

The crisp sound design, by Julie Ferrin and Martin Carrillo, also works best when emphasizing the macabre (thunderclaps and echo-chamber effects), although the only real slip is to pipe movielike background music (composed by Paul Hepker) into some of the scenes — an excessive and unfortunate choice.

But this evening is about more than technical sparkle, and it is a larger tribute to the production that our attention and empathy remain, as ever, with the star-crossed young lovers and the outside prejudices that inexorably crush their adolescent devotion.

Jason Van Over plays Romeo as both a smitten boy and reluctant man, while Tessa Thompson’s Juliet is a young adult struggling to be something other than the exquisite pet her parents (David Roberson and Inger Tudor) treat her as. The lovers’ improbable chemistry lifts the story above the interpretations that R&J often falls victim to — ur-teen suicide afterschool special, perhaps, or thinly veiled adult entertainment.

The rest of Michetti’s cast is rock solid, with the critical roles of Romeo’s stalwart friend, Mercutio, and Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, masterfully essayed by J. Todd Adams and Will Owens, respectively. They provide the kind of jostling contrast that can only end in swordplay, with Adams’ bourbon-swilling, ass-pinching Cajun playing off Owens’ icy Prince of Cats. More, certainly, than Romeo and Juliet, they embody the forces that will collide again and again on the American frontier and in this country’s racial psyche. Michetti’s strengths as a director lie in allowing his unspoken background themes to remain unspoken, letting them emerge as a palimpsest under the faded paint of New Orleans storefronts. He is also good at keeping his ensemble moving with slight gestures, both during line deliveries and in moments of relative repose — the result is a show that seems to be a giant organism always in motion.

Comparisons are inevitable with any Shakespeare production, and Michetti’s simply burns the memory of Peter Hall’s R&J that ran at the Ahmanson Theater in 2001 and sweeps away the ashes. That production also featured an interracial Romeo and Juliet (he was black, she was white), but Hall only played the race card, using skin color as a gag that ultimately got lost within an ensemble composed of different ethnicities. Michetti’s staging uses race to draw a clear and uncomfortable divide, with the Capulets, defined in the program notes as “Free People of Color,” facing the business end of white-American expansion (a theme that resonates with post-colonial Los Angeles history). The difference in the two approaches to exploring race onstage is the difference between a conceit and a gimmick, and Michetti wisely trusts his audience sufficiently to provoke them into thinking rather than merely applauding.

Tom Buderwitz's moody realization of the French Quarter looms languidly before us. The Boston Court is a lovely space and a solid plus to the theatre community.

Reviewed By Rob Kendt

What's in a directorial concept? Would this new "Romeo and Juliet" — set, its subtitle tells us, in antebellum New Orleans, 1836 — smell as sweet in any other period? With romantic leads as to-die-for as Jason Van Over and Tessa Thompson, even the Ice Age would seem hot. As sensuous as they are sentient, as ardent as they are articulate, this is a pair of lovable lovers we can fall for almost as quickly as they do.

Of course, there's more to Shakespeare's star-crossed tragedy than nookie. For the Montague/Capulet feud, director Michael Michetti has conjured a subtle, fascinating historical milieu: Juliet is a Creole from New Orleans' French-inflected, largely African American establishment elite, while her Romeo represents a burgeoning class of white interlopers whose descendants will surely one day vote for Huey Long. A fiercely sarcastic Cajun Mercutio (J. Todd Adams) voices many of the latter set's class resentments, even giving a line about "minstrels" an ugly racial sting.

Ultimately, though, this early-American overlay, so recognizable yet so strange, feels more like a curiosity than a revelation. It does have its compensations — bracing voodoo chants led by the extraordinary Bernadette L. Speakes, and Carlease Burke's deliciously conspiratorial Creole Nurse. And it does give Michetti's team — costumer Alex Jaeger, scenic designer Tom Buderwitz, lighting designer Dan Weingarten, sound designers Julie Ferrin and Martin Carrillo, and composer Paul Hepker — a golden opportunity to showcase the stunning, capacious, spanking-new Boston Court.

We certainly can't begrudge Michetti's ambition in cooking up such an intriguing if overstuffed feast, especially since what keeps it simmering is genuine sexual heat. Indeed, the frisson between Thompson and Van Over has a lot less to do with the forbidden fruit of miscegenation, as this interracial backdrop might suggest, than with old-fashioned, five-alarm sex appeal.

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It's the retelling of William Shakespear's tragedy of love and family war. This time, the scene moves to 19th century New Orleans. Within the French Quarter live two families. The Capulets, a clan that are 'free people of color', that is, people that are Negro or mixed race that made up a good part of the French speaking Catholic population of the city. The other family is the Montagues, a well off group of Protestants that were from 'back east' who arrived in New Orleans to make their fortunes in the local commerce of this major port town. Jason Van Over is Romero Montague, and Tessa Thompson is Juliet Capulet, two young people who fall in love with each other while their families are in war.

Michael Michetti directs this familiar tale and places the story and its characters in a new setting that works perfectly. The mood and feel is just right for this play. From Tom Buderwitz's set design, adapting many of the scenes to actual places in New Orleans, to Alex Jaeger's costumes created in the style of early 19th French/American fashions, one could imagine that this saga of love and death was really born in that town!

Among the cast in this play are Phil Proctor as Father Lawrence, Carlease Burke as Juliet's Nurse, J. Todd Adams as Mercutio, Inger Tudor as Mme. Capulet, David Roberson as M. Capulet, Will Ownes as Tybalt, Donavin Dain Scott as Paris, John Ross Clark as Mr. Montague, Sarah Hartmann as Mrs. Montague, Ryan Spahn as Benvolio, and Sean McGuinness as the Mayor of New Orleans, Denis Prieur.

It is always refreshing to experience The Bard's play in a whole new setting, and this version will be just as 'hot and spicy' as a bowl of gumbo performing within the settings of the Boston Court Theater. Oui!!

Reviewed By Frances Baum Nicholson

The opening of any new theater is auspicious, at a time when so many theatrical troupes are closing their doors. But the premiere production by Theatre at Boston Court, the new state-of-the-art small theater in Pasadena manages to show off all its wonderful gadgets in the process of producing a first-class version of a classic. The results are a theater lover's delight, and bode well for the company's future.

It's overkill to title the play Romeo and Juliet: Antebellum New Orleans,1836.'' Almost all Shakespeare plays are regularly set in different time periods, both to bring freshness and to examine the universality of the plays themselves.

Still, once one has read some of the research which is posted on the theater walls and printed in the program (though neither is necessary for an enjoyment of the production), it is fascinating to see how well ``Romeo and Juliet'' translates to this particular setting. And the translation has been meticulous, from Tom Buderwitz' portico-based set design to the actors' careful differentiation of accents.

The Capulets are Creole ``free people of color'' - prominent citizens of a city divided less by color than by background. The Montagues are American, protestant in a Catholic area, and separated by culture from the Creoles. The Duke becomes the actual mayor of the period, and over it all lies a charm, possibly a curse, laid by a malevolent ``Voodoo Queen'' who was a major figure at the time.

The company proves up to all the demands of these complex changes. Jason Van Over makes a charming Romeo, with that necessary overlay of innocence and youth. Tessa Thompson becomes convincingly 14 as Juliet, convincingly absolute in all her emotions, sometimes very funny, and wracked by the intense emotions.

Carlease Burke has a wonderful time with Juliet's now-Caribbean nurse. It's fascinating how natural, and often how funny those lines seem in that accent. Indeed, the entire company proves remarkable. Other standouts include J. Todd Adams as a Cajun Mercutio, Phil Proctor as the steady Father Laurence, Ryan Spahn as the solidly loyal friend Benvolio, and Damean Lamar Easter as a very funny Capulet slave. Bernadette L. Speakes becomes the voodoo priestess, bringing an eerie quality to the proceedings.

Director Michael Michetti has had a wonderful time using this small but impressive theatrical space. Scenes flow from one to another with grace and precision.

The humor the play has always contained gets its due along with the tragedy. Aided by sound designers Julie Ferrin and Martin Carrillo, one gets a greater than usual feeling of place from simply the way one hears. Check out the echoes in the church, or the way flies buzz across the space behind you.

Yet the technological bells and whistles do not rule this production, and that is the joy. Fresh, well played, and genuinely entertaining, this Shakespeare would be worth seeing anywhere.

Reviewed by Travis Michael Holder

The opening of Michael Michetti’s current reinvention, Romeo & Juliet: Antebellum New Orleans, 1836, is automatically a major event for our ever-beleaguered theatrical community. It seems a gentleman named Z. Clark Branson had a dream—and a few million dollars lying around—and entrusted them both into the capable hands of producer/actress Eileen T’Kaye to use for the creation of a state-of-the-art small theatre complex. In a remarkably short period of time, Michetti’s Romeo & Juliet has become the first presentation to grace the impressive mainstage of the new Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena, where Michetti and fellow LA theatrical luminary Jessica Kubzansky were ensconced earlier this year as co-artistic directors—inspired choices, both.

As in all of Michetti’s signature spectaculars, Romeo & Juliet is in concept an accomplishment almost to equal the creation of the theatre itself. It is a brave and inventive interpretation of the great classic, updating the story to New Orleans in the mid-1800s, a place where the Creoles, descendants of the city’s Colonial French and Spanish settlers, clashed with the thousands of American Protestants who migrated there to find their fortune. Wary of one another’s cultures and religious backgrounds, tensions grew to hostility between the inhabitants and Michetti, surely after exhaustive research, has made his Romeo a member of a family of wealthy newcomers and Juliet the daughter of a prominent Creole mixed-race family.

The idea is brilliant and Michetti’s remarkable vision is gorgeously aided by a crack design team. Tom Buderwitz’ versatile two-story movable wrought iron structures tower over the actors; the lighting design by Dan Weingarten, assisted by young CalARTS genius-to-be Christopher Kuhl, is eerily moody; Alex Jaeger’s costumes are meticulously detailed; and sound designers Julie Ferrin and Martin Carrillo have worked wonders around the haunting original music by Paul Hepker. Even the choreography by Titus Fotso and Lee Martino is impeccable, as is the precision fight sequences directed by The Thrown Gauntlet.

There’s some noteworthy supporting work, including Ryan Spahn, in contrast so simple and direct as Benvolio; Carlease Burke as Juliet’s Nurse, also working against the often indulgent comedic moments traditionally offered her character; and the subtly effective performance of Inger Tudor as Juliet’s torn and beaten mother, whose grief in act two the actress interprets with a quiet puzzlement and drawing inward that wrenches the heart in its honesty.

Ultimately, the best news is the majestic new Boston Court, standing today on a plot of land where a parking lot stood not long ago. Created literally from the ground up, this amazing complex, filled with Branson’s own collection of fine art, still smells like a new car but functions like the Taper. There are two unique playing areas, the sweeping 99-seat space where Romeo & Juliet has debuted, and a second hydraulically-altering 60-seat music/concert hall where a summer of great jazz just inaugurated the complex itself. All Angelenos owe Mr. Branson and his world-class team—T’Kaye, Kubzansky, Managing Director Michael Seel and certainly Michael Michetti, still one of the finest and most innovative directors in LA despite any momentary misstep while working so feverishly to simultaneously open this complex and direct 25 actors in a burdensome classic—a few sustained rounds of applause. Call (626) 683-6883 for information.