Romeo and Juliet

Thanks for that observation, Freddie. I'm welcoming to all valid criticism...some feedback has already helped me tweak to make it a better play...and any problems that can't be solved, I'm willing to learn from and try to apply in the future. Tonight's the last chance to catch a public performance in Subiaco, but we're only 40% through the actual tour, heading down south then doing Perth metro schools. So I'd still welcome opinions from anyone about what they like or dislike. Personal opinions are all valid. But I'm not going to let unsubstantiated argument slip by without "a challenge, on my life" to quote Mercutio. "Any man that can write may answer a letter". So here is the letter I submitted to the arts editor of the West Australian: From: crgwllms@bigpond.com To: stephen.bevis@wanews.com.au Subject: Joanna Gentilli review of Romeo & Juliet Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:42:38 +0800 "Shakespeare a tough task for young cast"    Today, p 12, Friday Aug 27, 2010 http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/entertainment/a/-/arts/7834441/theatre-review-romeo-and-juliet/ Hello Stephen. Joanna Gentilli's review today of Class Act's production of 'Romeo & Juliet' caused a bit of consternation! As director and script editor, I don't want to enter into the argument of whether my production of the play is any good or not. I totally accept that the reviewer found it 'a mixed bag' with 'varying degrees of success.' The first half of the review consists of opinions, good or bad, that are all valid. But around the time Gentilli starts wondering why the characters attending a costume ball are wearing costumes not reflected in other parts of the play, I start to wonder if she actually knows anything about Shakespeare's most famous play? Rather than irrelevantly researching the Renaissance (there is no justification for considering the play or characters anything earlier than Elizabethan), she would have done well to have learnt more about the "facts" she then tries to put forward. The second half of the review seems highly unsupportable. >> "Shakespeare is not just about the actor and the story. It is also about the power of language. The playwright's clever punning on the word "prick", for example, has several layers of meaning and the comedy is in the words. The actors lunge for their crotches and turn word power into slapstick." Now, I would argue the other way: that Shakespeare is not just about the power of language, but it is more about the actor and the story! That's the whole point of it being a performed play and not say, a collection of his sonnets. Perhaps this is the point of view of a wordsmith versus a thespian, but I think it's an important distinction. The words are only there for someone to act them out. So Gentilli's explanation of punning on the word "prick" all sounds highly intellectual, but can she actually provide an example where Shakespeare did not intend a bawdy, ribald, thoroughly explicit meaning, which would have been acted out for slapstick comic purposes? It is fairly well documented that this was exactly Shakespeare's intention! She may have thought the physical comedy didn't work for her, which is fine, but she's wrong to try to assert that it shouldn't have been there. It most certainly was written for exactly that purpose. >> "...certain characters in a well-known play have a certain resonance. The nurse is traditionally Juliet's collaborator, a sensible older woman who loves her young mistress unconditionally and is a foil to bullying parents. This makes her final denial of Juliet all the more heartbreaking. It is difficult to empathise with Angelique Malcolm's shrill cavorting nurse who utters cries of "fwah" and indulges in pelvic thrusting." This, too, is rather unsubstantiated. I don't know where Gentilli gets her 'traditional' explanation from? Traditionally, the part was played to the hilt by a man in drag! The nurse is largely the comic relief: the entire first half of her script is virtually nothing but bawdy and blatant puns and sexual references; and in fact, I cut about a third of her original dialogue, all of which was to do with bodily functions and buffoonery! It would indeed be a very dreary play without this comedy, and the beauty of the character is that she is simultaneously a clown character AND a sympathetic foil...a role which I happen to think Angelique is portraying very capably.  I feel it was very unfair therefore, for Joanna Gentilli to finish her review insinuating that Angelique Malcolm's performance was substandard, when it would be clear to most in my industry that Gentilli's own grasp of the text is itself rather substandard.  I would have much preferred her to lay all her criticism on me, for my directorial decisions. Then it would have remained a matter of opinion (which I would have happily shrugged off, secure in my better-informed viewpoint), rather than the personal attack on Angelique it became.  And then, I don't know if she realises how condescending her final statement is: >> "That said, the audience, mainly high school students, loved it." After expressing her own dissatisfaction, it is rather snobbish to insert "mainly highschool students" as if the only reason the audience loved it was because they were some form of lowest-common-denominator, and that their obvious enjoyment may undermine the opinion the reviewer has established - that she clearly thinks it ought not to have been enjoyed.  After more than 20 years of creating drama specifically for students, I know better than to condescend to them. Every decision made in my directing process was to enable high school students (clearly our target audience) to absolutely understand and enjoy the text as performed onstage, without 'dumbing it down'. And even Miss Gentilli seems to agree I achieved this.  Responses from schools have been uniformly positive. That it is a low budget production with a lot of relative newcomers is viable fodder to find flaws, and nor do I claim to have made perfect directorial decisions. But it also seems obvious that 'Shakespeare was a tough task for a young journalist'...! Cheers, Craig Williams ~<8>-/====\---------