Some want of wit

The Verona project, part VIII

Who (how old), when, how long? Alex Hyde-White (22) and Blanche Baker (25), 1982, 2¾hr.

What sort of R&J? Bland, bland, bland; Baker performs like an unpromising high school student. She delivers exactly one line--Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?--with conviction. The rest might as well be silence--much would be better thus.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 5, I suppose: it's not silly at all, but neither is it deadly.

"Wherefore": do the playmakers know what it means? Yes, I'll grant that Baker's wooden reading of the sequence makes it clear that she knows that the "wherefore" leads to the "Deny thy father."

Carrion flies? Yep; but Hyde-White renders the bizarre bit uninteresting.

Body count? This is interesting, for in a nearly complete production, somehow Lady Montague is spared. The other 5 all die, though.

What (else) is missing? Until late in the fourth act, I was under the impression that the production was virtually if not literally complete. But from that point on, there's a lot of truncation: almost all of the musicians' scene sequence that ends the act, e.g., and much of the dialogue (and the presence of Paris's page) from V.iii, the play's final scene.

What (else) is changed? The end of V.i, wherein Romeo visits the apothecary, is presented as a visual flash-forward while he recites the lines describing his earlier impressions of the man (who thus gets to speak no lines, but just hands off the vial).

What (else) is odd? I guess the oddest (and most ominous) thing is that the biggest name in the cast belongs to the woman who plays the Nurse, and that name is . . . Esther Rolle. Her performance is scarcely dy-no-mite. Oh, another odd thing: Romeo's poison is so fast-acting that although he can say "Thus with a kiss I die," he can't actually get his mouth near J's face before expiring.

End-of-the-play exposition? In perhaps the smartest decision in the production, the Prince cuts off Friar "I will be brief" Laurence's long-winded account and leaps straight into his final scolding of Montague and Capulet.

This is about as close to a complete waste of time as Shakespeare gets.