R ‘n’ J: The Untold Story of Shakespeare’s Roz and Jules
The Firehall Arts Centre
September 7-10 and 12, 2019
Tickets from vancouverfringe.com
Posted September 6, 2019
“Oh, happy dagger!/This is thy sheath”. But, hold on, isn’t that dead, definitely dead Romeo’s cellphone chiming? Check it out. What? Text messages to and from Rosaline? Weeks and weeks of them? That two-timing cad. Playwright Carmine Bernhardt takes Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers and runs with it. But, unfortunately, she doesn’t run very far with it. Jules is preggers and Roz is furious so they team up and the rest of this show is incomprehensible. Costume changes ensue faster than you can say ‘codpiece’. Characters rush on and off before you figure out who they are. It’s kind of a madcap whirlwind set in the present with some blank verse and some contemporary slang. Acting styles are all over the place from over-the-top caricature to serious commentary on parenthood.
Presented by Stolen Cactus (London, UK) and billed as a Thelma-and-Louise style tragicomedy, it doesn’t end in a thrilling airborne final hurrah but with the spawn of Romeo bringing together the Capulet and Montague grandmas and grampas.