Photo By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran / Staff
WHEREFORE ART THOU ROMEO AND JULIET?—Star-crossed theatre artists were days away from opening a long-awaited bilingual version of William Shakespeare’s masterpiece “Romeo and Juliet” when the production was cast asunder by the too-sudden closure of the college. A tiny invited audience of about 40 family, friends and journalists were blessed to be the sole witnesses of a dress rehearsal—the lone performance before California’s shelter-in-place order brought down the final curtain. Juliet (Sasha Aguirre) on the balcony.
By Brittany Cruz-Fejeran
Star-crossed Southwestern College theater artists were days away from opening a long-awaited bilingual version of William Shakespeare’s masterpiece “Romeo and Juliet” when the production was cast asunder by the too-sudden closure of the college. Love in the Time of Covid, like the warring Montagues and Capulets, means the sun will not show his head on what promised to be a spectacular production.
The show shall not go on, but a tiny invited audience of about 40 family, friends and journalists were blessed to be the sole witnesses of a full-production dress rehearsal—the lone performance hours before California’s shelter-in-place order brought down the final curtain. Brilliant performances by Jaden Guerrero, Sasha Aguirre, Cassandra Garcia and Marcel Ferrin are now consigned to legend. It was a beautiful creation whose time was done all too soon.
Director Ruff Yeager is hardly the first to rip “Romeo and Juliet” from 16th century Verona and transport it through the time-space continuum, though he did so more cleverly than most. Some Shakespeare purists groaned at the idea of Spanish invading The Bard’s epic English, but Yeager’s creative team made it work and brought heightened relevance to a production staged six miles from the Mexican border.
Without saying so directly, the Southwestern College take on Juliet’s Capulet family hints broadly that they are a criminal enterprise, with her cruel father a slightly more refined El Chapo Guzman. Like many South County households, Spanish is spoken at the Capulet’s home with cleverly placed English subtitles floating just over the heads of the bilingual performers. Spanish may be the loving tongue, but the Capulets’ passionate, rapid-fire conversations used the emotional potential of Spanish to great effectiveness. It had the added advantage of setting the families apart in the eyes of the audience.
Against this tension the production roars to life with one of the many excellent fight scenes skillfully choreographed by Jordan Miller. Athletic, wiry and brimming with vitriol, the young Montague and Capulet street soldiers scale walls, leap over axes and dodge projectiles with frightening realism.
Jaden Guerrero’s Romeo Montague was a revelation from the moment he appears talking Shakespearean trash with his cousin Mercutio (an outstanding Marcel Ferrin). Guerrero shapes Romeo like soft clay throughout the production, massaging him into a vessel to express his own deep emotions. He is a handsome but bawdy teenage punk comfortable running with the street rats and skewering rival Capulets who transforms into a movable feast of love and passion, only to once again succumb to the violence and death all around him. Romeo raged against the machine, cried tears of joy and despair, and surrendered to his grief in a heartbreaking moment that had tears streaming down the faces of the audience. It was an astonishing performance by a young performing artist with a very bright future.
Most of the cast was solid and believable, especially considering they were still one week and several rehearsals away from their planned opening. Cassandra Garcia was especially memorable as Juliet’s pliant but loyal nurse who unintentionally contributes to her demise. Ferrin’s Mercutio was both a festering hood and comic relief whose death scene was a masterfully dramatic moment.
Also starring in this production were the set, lights and props of Professor Michael Buckley, a San Diego County theater legend for his work in professional houses throughout Southern California. Buckley went for baroque, seamlessly blending Verona’s opulent architecture with a colonial Mexican look straight out of Guadalajara or San Miguel de Allende. His palatial buildings had fallen on hard times, however, practically still smoldering from a destructive war that left them bombed out and pock marked. His remarkable lighting abandoned the garish sun of the spotlight and guided the story through cheerful dawns and sorrowful dusks with ceiling lights and specials that were subliminal but sublime.
Yeager made a grip of good choices, though his anachronistic use of music by Fall Out Boy fell flat. The only cringe-worthy moment of the production was, unfortunately, the very end, where some of the supporting cast with big moments could not rise to the level of Guerrero and the other leads. They are forgiven though, because of the missed rehearsals they were those who rush, stumble and fall.
Theater is the most transient art, created like flowers to briefly blossom, radiate beauty and wither, to live on in memory. It is an artistic tragedy that this transcendental production was not allowed to fully blossom and was given just one fleeting moment on the stage to end in this strange eventful history. When the history of the Great Covid Plague is writ large at our college, let it be remembered that a great production briefly graced our stage only to dissipate in a fume of sighs.