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Bleachers Jack Antonoff would be writing music (OMG,one degreeof Taylor Swift!
Where was Shakespeare in all this?
Such is the enervating effect of so aggressively clickbaity and uncurious a production.
Our community could use a dose of the feeling that were more the same than we are different.
Sure, we live in a belligerent epoch in an ever more violently polarized country.
Theres hardly proof of its coherence.
The lobbys got a merch table and an arcade claw machine and a lot of bumping pink lighting.
In Golds world, though, surface is all there is indifferent dignity with a heavy glaze of alikeness.
Why does the fighting morph into weird-sexy-almost-make-out-times and then back again?
Here, its a floating voice, sans character, sans peril.
What are its stakes?
Why do the kids feel compelled to continue it?
What do they think they are fighting either against or for?
Her Juliet, though, is woefully underbaked.
She feels, like almost everyone in the show, disturbingly unspecific.
Who are any of these people?
ShakespearesRomeo and Julietvaults into the emotional stratosphere in Act Three and stays there till its finish.
But no one on Golds stage is expanding to meet the play.
Theres gold in those hills, but it has to be mined.
Theres no breathlessness, no tension, no danger.
Lines are flat where they should sparkle and pausey where they should fly.
Any remaining chance the actors have at generating their own pathos, their own power, is fatally undermined.
Frankly, the youth seem fine.
Its Shakespeare whos f**ked.
For now, forget the Capulets and the Montagues.
Theres much more fun to be had with the queens from the Cat House and the Fish Tank.
Romeo and Julietis at Circle in the Square.Drag: The Musicalis at New World Stages.
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