I arrived in the Lower East Side just before seven to find a bespectacled David waiting by the fence with red rose in hand. Did I mention this was Shakespeare in the Parking Lot? The Drilling Company has been killing Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Ophelia, Anthony and Cleopatra, you name it, for 25 years—free of charge! If that’s not a service to the community, I don’t know what is.

“I brought you a stink blossom,” David said as he handed me the rose. I breathed in the fragrance, impressed by the gift, but even more by the double-reference to Shakespeare and the Simpsons, both personal faves. “Juliet was right,” I replied, “It smells as sweet.” The evening was off to a good start. He gallantly offered his arm and walked me to the stage, a square of asphalt surrounded on three sides by zip-tied rows of plastic chairs and on the fourth by a battered scaffold that practically cried out “Romeo! Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo!” in a husky New York accent.

So much for the prologue. How about the play? I have to admit I was a little worried when a street gang straight from an 80’s movie interrupted Shakespeare’s prologue with a boom box that drowned out the opening lines. But once Adam Huff’s loud and lovable Romeo and Anwen Darcy’s pert and playful Juliet met, I knew all would be well­—except for the tragic ending, of course.

With a play as familiar and as frequently staged as Romeo and Juliet, the obvious question is: “What will these guys do differently?” The standard gimmick is to shift the action to a more “relatable” epoch. Luckily this show did little of that. Instead, under the guidance of skilled director Lukas Raphael, it relied on lively staging in a familiar setting, genuine chemistry between the characters, and strong, convincing performances that bring out the nuances and humor of Shakespeare’s text. These actors aren’t just reciting lines. They get Shakespeare, and they want you to get him, too.

Alessandro Colla’s Mercutio was especially adept at teasing out the funny parts, and Una Clancy’s Nurse was just hilarious, particularly in the scene where Juliet has to massage the news out of her. Yet both manage to rise movingly to the occasion when death rears it head.

On the tragic front, Serena Ebony Miller moves convincingly between Nun and Friar, delivering a passionate performance as both. And Jack Sochet gave me chills as the livid Capulet, threatening to disown his daughter one moment, only to find her (seemingly) dead the next. A father’s remorse at being unable to take back what he said was etched on Sochet’s tortured face.

There were a few problems of a technical sort. The otherwise excellent John Caliendo was just too quiet as Benvolio/Paris, and the dying lovers expired on the ground—out of sight and hearing of at least half the audience.

But let’s face it. The highlight of Romeo and Juliet is the balcony scene. And this production did not disappoint. Set on a ramshackle scaffold in a parking lot, the birth of a tragic passion was all the more poignant, like a flower blossoming through a crack in the cement. The audience sat smiling and spellbound in the gathering dusk, a gentle breeze rustling the trees behind them. It was the kind of magic only live theatre can deliver.

“O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” chides Romeo like a handsy Tinder date. “What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” Julie responds coyly in one of her finer moments. That pretty much sums up how my date with “David” ended. Did he call the next day and offer to marry me? No, he swiped left and moved on. And so did I.

Maybe that’s why attempts to modernize this play usually fall flat. In an era with so few obstacles to love, Romeo and Juliet’s sudden, fatal passion is simply unrelatable. All a girl can do is sit back and let herself be transported to an exotic age when men fought and died for love—without forgetting it’s also an age when fathers treated daughters like chattel. The thrill is in the unrelatable, the unfamiliar. It’s in the journey. And for all the Romeos and Juliets I’ve seen, I can honestly say it’s a journey best taken in a parking lot with The Drilling Company.

Romeo and Juliet is running through July 27 at The Clemente Parking Lot, 114 Norfolk Street. For more information visit shakespeareintheparkinglot.com

The post Sweet Sorrow: A Playdate Review of Romeo and Juliet appeared first on Reviews from Underground.

More a series of short, tightly constructed and flawlessly timed sketches, Croissant follows a group of camping couples as they test the boundaries of their relationships and the patience of the park’s overzealous guardian, Ranger Dave, played by a brilliant Conor Murphy. The decision to cast male campers as female and vice versa provides an amusingly subversive twist, especially in the case of Julia Finch’s longsuffering Frederick and Luke Medina’s desperately needy Imogen. Even in the most absurd situations, their performances remain so deeply rooted in the truth of their characters that the play becomes less a parody of clichéd gender roles than a sincere exploration of how men and women see each other.

Which isn’t to say they’re not funny. They absolutely are. And if Doug didn’t laugh, it may be that they were truthful enough to make him uncomfortable.

But none of the actors lived more truthfully to more hilarious effect than Murphy. My favorite moment was when, as a “matter of principle,” Ranger Dave rebukes writer/actor Veronica Tijoe’s October for baking him cookies in the ranger station, then has the nerve to ask for them anyway. When she refuses “as a matter of principle,” his eyes light up. “I understand,” he says. In lesser hands, that would be just another punchline. But Murphy’s delivery contains so much more. It reveals the character’s love of law as the highest good, preferable even to cookies. It shows that what motivates Ranger Dave is not a small man’s need to lord it over others, but an almost fanatical idealism. A strong choice for an actor to make. Though as usual, one is never quite sure who to credit—the actor or the play’s abundantly talented director, Rosie Glen-Lambert.

The show also features a lavish set designed by Lex Gernon and some surreal and imaginative touches, like origami cranes dropping persistently and inexplicably from the sky, Kat Devoe-Peterson as a giant used teabag, and Brandon Blum as a talking bear on the trail of the titular croissant–all of which was completely lost on Doug.

My only problem was with the show’s pacing. Maybe it’s unrealistic to expect this of the actors, but I wished the frenetic pacing and overlapping dialogues of the first act could have lasted into the second. Or that some of that energy had been shifted to the second half. Granted, energy wanes as day turns to night. But personally I prefer a song that ends with a bang to one that fades out.

Which brings me to the date part of Playdate. Doug struck me as the kind of LA guy who is more comfortable chatting up girls in a club, where his tan can do most of the talking. Maybe it was mean of me to make him sit through a fringe play, only to excuse myself after a single, awkward drink at The Plunge, a newly opened bar by the Broadwater Mainstage. But hey, he knew what he was getting into. And it’s not like I dragged him to Equus.

Visit the play’s website at: www.theatticcollectivela.com

The post Playdate Reviews The Last Croissant appeared first on Reviews from Underground.