Saturday Evening in Brooklyn Bridge Park: Theater 2020 / Visions for a New Millennium presents "Romeo and Juliet" at Pier 1's Granite Prospect

This evening we had the joy of seeing the fantastic inaugural production of Theater 2020: Visions for a New Millennium, an innovative, swiftly-paced performance of Romeo and Juliet, from the steps of the Granite Prospect of Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 1, with the tragic love story set amid Hindu-Muslim conflict, with New York Harbor, the skyline of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty serving as backdrop.

It was a memorable show with first-rate acting and wonderful use of puppetry, a thrilling debut for the Brooklyn Heights professional theater company and its producing artistic directors, the married team of Judith Jarosz (choreographer here) and David Fuller (director/fight director for this production).

We've seen a lot of free outdoor productions of Romeo and Juliet in the past couple of years: the EBE Ensemble in Prospect Park; the Curious Frog Theatre Company, also in Prospect Park; Hudson Warehouse in Riverside Park; and Smith Street Stage in Carroll Park -- all of which we enjoyed immensely. But the Theater 2020 had its own special magic.

The disadvantage for us was that we were a little tired from rushing from the Carroll Gardens Brave New World Repertory show for our second dose of Shakespeare in one day, and we were more than a little hot from our long walk after taking the F and A trains.

As Judith Jarosz said at the beginning, it might have been better to begin a little later than 6 p.m. on such a hot day. We and other members of the audience held our program or hands over our eyes because of the glare of the sun, and you can see the result in our pathetic photos.

But we wouldn't have traded the experience for anything. Hey, if we weren't so cheap, we could have seen one of the previous eight performances in the air-conditioned English Gothic splendor of Saint Charles Borromeo here in the Heights on Sidney Place. But we would have missed this spectacular backdrop, the view from Brooklyn Heights that one writer called "the most gorgeous cliche in America."

The use of the four puppets was absolutely brilliant. They added an extra appeal to the many kids in attendance but also added to the mysteriously otherworldly feel of what seemed a production ripped from reality's headlines (at home, we saw the front page story in the Sunday New York Times: "Afghans Rage at Young Lovers; A Father Says Kill them Both," about a haram love between a Hazara girl and a Tajik boy).

In this production, there were extraordinary performances by Poonam Basu as a Muslim Juliet and Vanditt Bhatt as Romeo, a Hindu. The chemistry between them seemed palpable from the moment they lay eyes on each other where Romeo and his companions put on keffiyehs to go to Lady Capulet's ball in disguise.

The couple also managed to seem like teenagers, and there were especially nice line readings in the balcony scene, played so that most of us on the lower steps had to look up (and momentarily avoid the sun's glare -- of course, it was Shakespeare who said "Fear no more the heat o' the sun").

The other actors also did superb jobs in establishing their distinct characters. By eliminating the Montagues and Lord Capulet (except as puppets), Brandie Moore as Lady Capulet had to shoulder a good deal on her own. She actually was the most sympathetic Lady Capulet we've ever seen, more caring and devout than either chilly, haughty or distracted; it was a really nuanced interpretation of the role.

The Nurse is a great role, and Lynn Marie Macy resisted the temptation we've seen to ham it up; she was wonderfully quirky and loving and self-involved, but she also had a no-nonsense side that felt refreshing. We also give her props as costume coordinator, as the clothes made a big impact.

Nicholas Pollifrone made a hyperkinetic skinny bundle of energy as Mercutio. His Queen Mab speech, a highlight of the text's poetry for us, was delivered beautifully and so energetically that we thought he could propel himself from the steps into the air with the occasional helicopter above us. A good soul, he seemed either to be slightly stoned or fidgety with ADHD in his dynamic performance.

Perhaps it's our own quirky reading of the text, but we've always liked productions where the actor playing Benvolio seems like the only sensible person in Verona. (Sometimes it's the Prince, but here the Prince was a scary-looking beetled-browed, oversized puppet, an apt ruler for a city constantly on the verge of hysteria.) Marc Andrew Hem Lee didn't disappoint us in his interpretation of Benvolio; we especially caught what seemed to be his thoughts as he reacted to other characters' dialogue as he stood a little bit apart, on the periphery. (Speaking of the periphery, check out the real-life bridal couple passing by on the left in this pic. Sometimes street theater has these wonderful moments of serendipity.)

Like Lynn Marie Macy, Nicholas Pollifrone and Marc Andrew Hem Lee, Justin Bennett, who played Laurence, also worked as a puppeter. And we know that must have been much harder than the seeming effortlessness we saw. Laurence here wears a white Nehru jacket (if we're bribed, we'll show you the photo of an 18-year-old boy wearing one in 1969) with a peace symbol (ditto) as well as a cross. Justin Bennett's performance was quite interesting; to us, he came off with a touch of M*A*S*H's Father Mulcahy and a bit of cluelessness, as if it takes him a few seconds too long to figure out what's going on while he needs to take a few seconds more to think before he starts giving his advice.

Kareem M. Lucas brings muscle to the dual roles of Tybalt and Paris; with the high testosterone level of his performances, it seems like dumb beginner's luck that Romeo manages to kill both characters. As Tybalt, he looks so fierce that you think he could eat Mercutio for breakfast (if he could catch him). His Paris is subtler, but no less ruthless in his interpretation, and having the same actor play both roles (sometimes we've seen actors play both Paris and the Prince) made us think about the connections between the characters of Tybalt and Paris, both of whom are upholding the maladroit current state of affairs in Verona and relations between Hindus and Muslims.

The fight scenes, by the way, are well-staged by the production's director, David Fuller (the choreography, also seamless, was done by Judith Jarosz and Poonam Basu [Juliet]). We also liked the way Hindi and Arabic words were tossed into the dialogue naturally: "salaam alaikum," "inshallah," "karma," "pandit."

This Romeo and Juliet was an auspicious debut for Theater 2020 and its vision (we have difficulty resisting the easy and apt pun). Both Judith Jarosz and David Fuller have a great deal of experience in different aspects of theater production; both were leaders of Theater Ten Ten, the longest consecutively operating Equity theater company off-Broadway.

We're grateful we got to see this terrific show for free at Brooklyn Bridge Park this evening.

Tuesday Evening in Carroll Gardens: Smith Street Stage presents "Romeo and Juliet" at Carroll Park

We took the G train ten stops from Williamsburg to Carroll Gardens this evening for the opening of Smith Street Stage's truly lovely production of Romeo and Juliet in Carroll Park.

Directed shrewdly by Robbie Sublett, this Romeo and Juliet is a bit of a tour de force since it's performed seamlessly with just five - count 'em, five - talented and versatile actors taking all the roles in Shakespeare's tragedy of young lovers.

Having seen this play performed outdoors twice in the past twelve days by other companies, we're always surprised that each new good production can bring out different aspects or nuances in the text. (As a writer and a literature teacher, we come at Shakespeare more from the text than anything else; as we show every time we write about seeing the play, we don't have much theater background or knowledge other than Harris Sarney's advanced drama classes in our senior year in Midwood in 1967-68.)

What the Smith Street Stage production made new for us in this Romeo and Juliet was the fierce intelligence both behind the text and in the characters. This was a thoughtful, even cerebral, production of the tragedy even though the fight scenes (old fashioned rapiers) were so skillful they stopped passing basketball players from the park frozen in place.

But in the performances, there was an element of self-awareness even when the young characters are acting most rashly, explosively and self-destructively: Tybalt, Mercutio, Benvolio, and of course Romeo and Juliet. The actors' intelligence made the characters seem as if they could envision what would happen five seconds into the future, which somehow caused everything to seem more poignant.

The main action took place by the centerpiece of Brooklyn's third-oldest park, the 1920 World War I Soldiers and Sailors Monument. It was a nice stage, but Carroll Park is pretty noisy on an early summer evening - the play started at 6:30 p.m. - behind the audience at the basketball courts, there were heavy-duty games going on, and since the park is just a few blocks square in the middle of a heavily-trafficked area, there were sirens from police cars, fire engines and ambulances and annoying motorcycles.

But except for a passing helicopter, the one time the actors made the good choice to pause for a moment, they did very well in coping with that. All the outdoor productions have these distractions and both the cast and crew and the audience learn to live with them.

This was the first production where we did see something actively malicious and stupid interfere: someone, from where we and we don't think anyone else could tell, hurled a water balloon onstage in front of the actors playing Romeo and Juliet (and a couple of feet in front of us). We don't know what to say about that except it's really sad and that the Smith Street Stage handled it expertly - which is to say they ignored it (except at the end, when a cast member, in thanking the audience and giving the usual plea for the donations that keep these plays going, said, "I hope nobody got wet.")

That cast member was Jonathan Hopkins, who was truly brilliant as Romeo, and yes, as Lady Capulet. His Romeo, like Beth Ann Leone's Juliet, seemed very 21st-century: they were street-savvy but also seemed more sophisticated than a teenage innocent. They've been around the block and they also radiate, especially in Hopkins' Romeo, a surprising degree of intellect and self-knowledge. It was a pleasure to watch them.

Hopkins, in switching from the role of Juliet's lover to that of her mother, was - like the other cast members - pretty damn amazing. Just watching his hands and feet as the petulant, distracted Lady Capulet was interesting.

Leone as Juliet seemed to have inherited a little of her mother's distractedness, which was an interesting choice, as was the director's choice to have the actors play the balcony scene without an enormous amount of face-to-face dialogue. Juliet sometimes seemed as if she was a little bit elsewhere in her fast-moving mind. Although Romeo kills Tybalt in the heat of passion over Mercutio's death, that action seems measured; in this production, Juliet seemed to us the rasher one of the two and just slightly manipulative.

As a twitchy Benvolio in a hoodie, Leone also proved interesting to watch. The other three actors, taking multiple parts, were a joy. In the beginning we wondered how they were going to pull it off with just a cast of five, but they did so quite effectively, in part by eliminating some scenes, particularly those of Paris and the Prince. (Lord Capulet arranges Juliet's marriage in a phone conversation with Paris, and you realize how little you miss the latter's replies; Paris and the Prince are pretty much banished from the end of the play, and nothing seemed lost.)

When we left, we told Sean Dillon, "You were great," and we meant it. As the Nurse, he was incredible, resisting caricature, very funny but it wasn't just the obvious drag (hairy legs, etc.) but a poignancy that came from the Nurse's character. With his fan (actually pretty handy on a warm night), the Nurse was a wonder: this was a pretty smart Nurse, loyal and easily annoyed, she seems in some ways to have more common sense than anyone in Verona. Dillon also made a fine business-like Prince in early scenes and also played Balthasar.

Joby Earle was equally effective as a talky, impulsive but always intelligent Mercutio. By the middle of his Queen Mab speech, he seems to know he should stop talking but plows ahead because, well, because he can and he damn well will - and this Mercutio likes to needle even the friends he so obviously cares for.

The actors work really well in these scenes. Earle's Lord Capulet was debonair, a decent guy who's found himself in a position just slightly above his capabilities. He also played Friar John in the one scene with the hapless messenger.

We loved Sam Rosenberg's dithering, nature-loving Friar Laurence, played with a yarmulke and we guess a Mexican-style poncho or maybe a serape (that, given his headgear, couldn't help seeming like a tallit). This Friar was funny, and like some of the other characters here, seemed sometimes to be thinking of something else, like one of his trees that needed pruning.

It was neat to see him morph into the cocky Tybalt - whose aggression always seems well-motivated - as well as the Capulets' incompetent servant.

Ruark and Blaise Downey worked really well as the musicians, coming onstage at the play's beginning and dominating its brilliantly conceived conclusion. The music was subtle but no less vital to getting the play to end on a high note. (By the way, as it got later, it got much quieter; although there were still a lot of basketball games, they just don't make as much noise in the dark.)

Director Robbie Sublett performed wonders with this production. Stage manager was Cynthia Vazquez; fight designer, Jessica Weiss; costumes by Laura Waringer; and publicity by Victoria Haynes. We showed up on Monday night, only to find it raining hard when we got out of the G train, so last night's opening was, obviously, postponed. We're really glad we came back.

Smith Street Stage's Romeo and Juliet will be playing tomorrow through Friday and then again August 26-28 next week. The new Brooklyn company's artistic director, tonight's Juliet and Benvolio, Beth Ann Leone, said the challenge of doing this play was "it's so familiar, that there's a risk it'll become commonplace, which would be an incredible shame."

She needn't have worried. This Romeo and Juliet is anything but commonplace, and it's definitely worth a trip to Carroll Park whether you're in the neighborhood or anywhere you can get an F or G train.

Sunday Night on the Upper West Side: Hudson Warehouse presents "Romeo and Juliet" at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument

This evening we were back at the Sailors' and Soldiers' Monument at West 89th Street and Riverside Drive to see yet another intelligent and accomplished production from Hudson Warehouse, a Romeo and Juliet set within the current (and ancient) conflict in Afghanistan, directed by the endlessly inventive Nicholas Martin-Smith.

By placing the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets in a war-torn realm in which long-standing blood feuds between clans and ethnic groups hold sway, this Romeo and Juliet, in the director's words, allows the work "to dig deep into the savagery of these two families."

Here, the Montagues are the American military. Romeo, his commanding officer Montague, and Friar Lawrence and the rest of Romeo's companions, are dressed in soliderly camoflage, dogtags, and combat boots.

The Capulets, meanwhile, are dressed in traditional Afghan attire: for the men, variously, stylized versions of the cape, caftan, salwar kameez, turban, keffiyeh and Karakul black lamb hat; for the women - Juliet, her mother Lady Capulet, and the Nurse, in public this means a version of the burqa, while in the sanctuary of their home, in Juliet's case a long, flowing dress - and a lot less, once she and Romeo are intimate.

The culture clash between the Montagues and Capulets is highlighted by other differences, and it's always clear that we're in a war zone in a place of endless war.

This is the first Shakespeare in the park production where we noticed the actors ever acknowledge the air traffic overhead; when one of the helicopters that occasionally fly over Riverside Park during performances whirred overhead, Romeo at one point looked up, suggesting that in this military conflict, this noisy intrusion is both routine and threatening.

Mercutio, the most transgressive character in the drama, is an American who's gone native a bit. Played with gusto by Tyler D. Hall, who was so good in last season's Hamlet and last month's Cyrano, the wildly erratic Mercutio remains shirtless beneath a Middle Eastern cape, wearing red-lensed sunglasses. He's disgusted with the conflict, and you get the feeling he would prefer to be anywhere else - surfing in southern California, say, or at a downtown club - and both his fanciful, almost psychedelic Queen Mab speech, and upon his fatal injury at the blade of Tybalt, his repeated "plague on both your houses" seem informed by weariness of unending war.

Of course Romeo and Juliet also transgress. Their love-at-first-sight meeting at the Capulet ball and the forbidden nature of their mutual attraction and acting on it seems more dangerous because of the setting; the stakes are higher in this fierce and fiery land.

The constant violent deaths give context to the killings of Mercutio and Tybalt; when the Capulets come running and beat their breasts in anguish at the death of their nephew Tybalt (played by a fiery, fanatical Gustavo Obregon, someone you can easily envision as a suicide bomber), it echoes countless photos we've seen of Middle Eastern family members so publicly mourning violent, senseless deaths of their young ones. Yet even where cycles of violent retribution seem to prevail, romantic passions - and genuine love - can bloom in unlikely places.

The narration of the play, both the prologue and epilogue, standing on the periphery, is Friar John (Drew Rosene, who also was the genius costume designer), whose usual small part as Friar Lawrence's messenger here is expanded, and Friar John seems to be the only person who represents the outside world; he looks like a foreign correspondent, flown in from London or Paris, trying to make sense of the madness he's observing.

The Prince here, played to a saturnine fare-thee-well by Jesse Michael Mothershed, seems to be a Western-installed military governor. He wears a suit and tie, or when interrupted at leisure, a polo shirt and casual-Friday slacks. He speaks with annoyance at having been brought in from a more civilized place to preside among such barbarians.

And both sides seem barbaric. The usually gentle Friar Lawrence is played in a brilliant turn by Friar Lawrence is a military man, with the mid-South drawl of a Marine drill sergeant; he and Hamlet typically exchange salutes, and if he's a man of God, it's as a Southern Baptist no-nonsense military chaplain. It was a terrific performance.

The apparent commanding officer of the soldiers' unit, Lord Montague (Vince Philip), is gruff and distracted, and the ground troops - Nike DeVita as Benvolio (with a black death's-head heavy metal t-shirt) and J.T. Maloy as Balthasar (Special Forces?) - are Midwestern or Southern Americans who look like they've given up on ever getting out of this bloody madhouse and act accordingly.

Valerie O'Hara, who was so good last weekend as Roxane's duenna Marguerite in Cyrano, plays a similar role here, as Juliet's Nurse. But her performance in Romeo and Juliet is much different: the Nurse, though she may complain a lot and act the fool, seems to be both wise and aware of her own genuine competence. Even when veiled, she's an open book.

Hudson Warehouse mainstay David Palmer Brown, a gifted actor whom we enjoyed so much last weekend as DeGuiche in Cyrano and last summer as Polonius in Hamlet, excels as a Lord Capulet with a medieval mindset; we got the feeling he'd hardly hesitate to kill his own daughter for the sake of family honor.

Amanda Renee Baker, as his wife, seemed very much a woman of her faith and region, alternately mournful and commanding.

There was so much about this production to admire. It began raining during the scene in which Juliet is notified of Tybalt's slaying and Romeo's banishment, and a number of people started leaving as they got wetter. But mercifully, the rain stopped just like that after a few minutes, and we felt lucky to be able to move up (down, actually, on the steps) for a better seat.

As the two lovers, Amanda Ochoa and George K. Wells were moving and utterly believable. They're both baby-faced enough to convey the innocence of adolescent passion and its impulsive nature.

There's a genuine sweetness to their moments together. Romeo drops the facade he sometimes wears among his fellow soldiers - he's a nervous smoker - and Juliet, her veil removed, reveals a deep generosity in her love.

Romeo's fatal fight at Juliet's tomb with Paris - Lorenzo Villanueva gives a subtle performance as a boyish count who feels he has to adopt the role of a future warlord - dreadfully compounds the awfulness here, and Romeo knows it. Juliet's suicide, and Romeo's, came very close to being averted, but Peter (Jerry Mouse Nwosuocha) and Balthasar (J.T. Maclay) dither on their respective sides: in this impulsively vicious land, it's probably functional to delay in most cases but of course here it's fatal.

At the end, Montague and Capulet, chastened by the deaths of their young, raise their arms to signal an end to the senseless violence. But even as the Prince proclaims that the tragedy has weirdly led to the accomplishment of his mission to pacify Verona, it is hard not to have lingering doubts that peace is at hand.

This was a remarkably timely and brilliant production by director Nicholas Martin-Smith, the Hudson Warehouse cast and crew, and the play continues over the next three weekends in August.