'Romeo and Juliet' at Hartford Stage - My Review

I have been a Shakespeare lover since growing up in Stratford when the Shakespeare Festival Theatre was alive and well. High School English department field trips to experience a Shakespearean work were a short bus trip away and I never missed them. I must admit, however, that I have never seen a full production of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ We read it in class of course, and I actually played Juliet in a short production of the balcony scene on my high school stage with a female classmate as Romeo. So I jumped at the chance to attend the press opening of the play at Hartford Stage that runs through March 20. Darko Tresnjak directed the tragedy that he sets in the 1940s.

Mr. Tresnjak told the Hartford Courant that he cast this production with some of his favorite actors and did not intentionally add another level of conflict to the two families who hate each other by casting some African-Americans as members of the Capulet clan. Kaliswa Brewster gives a strong performance as the doomed Juliet and Timothy D. Stickney plays her overbearing father. Jonathan Louis Dent plays the cousin Tybalt and Raphael Massie does well as both Gregory and Peter.

CLICK HERE TO READ MY ENTIRE REVIEW ON ONSTAGE WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE.

Production photos by T. Charles Erickson