Bargain-basement ‘Romeo’ may leave you confused

If there is value in having a bargain-basement Shakespeare production imported every year to the high schools and general public by the Utah Shakespearean Festival, then I have yet to discover it.

The actors are not the same who perform leads during the respected summer and fall festivals in Cedar City, and the quality of the shows is what you'd expect from a local community theater low on resources and talent.

This time out it's "Romeo and Juliet." You can tell the eight-member cast has had some kind of training, and the actors may one day turn out perfectly fine. But there's nary a one who is now ready to bring to life this kind of in-depth material.

Juliet (Christina Panfilio) is costumed to look like a Pollyanna, and she hardly seems to notice this nondescript Romeo (Timothy Pyles). Yet, the power of the play hinges on our believing that their worlds are turned upside down by their passions.

Bree Murphy McLane moves too carefree and girlishly to suggest a no-nonsense prince and Peter Eli Johnson lacks the authority of a Friar Lawrence.

The Elizabethan gangsters frolic together as if they were grade-school children enjoying a recess. Are we really to believe these charming cads are capable of killing each other? One of the gangsters is a young woman, and it makes for a whole different play to watch a man slap her.

And then there's this business of having only eight actors. It's disturbing to see a man die a slow death, only to have him pop up moments later in another role healthy and jabbering. If you don't know the script, you may find yourself scratching your head trying to figure out what is going on.

The set, with ladders and platforms, looks as if two Universal Gyms were shoved together in a desperate attempt to give us something to look at. There's no softness to the stage.

Why isn't a local theater providing schools with a Shakespeare workshop? The Nevada Conservatory Theatre, for example, has given us productions of the Bard that I suspect could be of great value to high-schoolers. Why are we going out of town to get what's already here?

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.