The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

The Tragedy Of Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare and directed by Raphael Massie
September 1st, 2017
Edgerton Park, New Haven
Major actors)
Escalus- Tamika Pettway
Romeo - Steven Lee Johnson
Juliet - Courtney Jamison
Nurse - Gracy Brown
Tybalt - Claire Warden

Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story based on their hopeless love written by William Shakespeare. The story begins with conflict and tension between two merchant families, the Montagues and the Capulets. One day Romeo goes to Capulet’s huge party in order to forget about his sick love for Rosaline, and he meets Juliet who is the Lord Capulet’s daughter. In the party, they fall in love with each other intensely; so after the party ends, Romeo sneaks into Juliet’s garden and discovers Juliet standing on the balcony. That night, they swear for their everlasting love and decide to have a marriage. Romeo’s mentor Friar Lawrence helps to officiate the marriage and they succeeded to get married. After their marriage, a big brawl happens between Romeo and Juliet’s cousin Tybalt; therefore, Romeo kills him and eventually get banished from Verona. At the same time Juliet is forced by her parents to marry with rich nobleman Prince, however, Juliet asks Friar to give her a potion which makes her like she died. When Romeo hears that Juliet died, he falls into deep sorrow and gets a poison to die beside her. Unfortunately, Romeo kills himself without knowing the truth that Juliet is actually alive and Juliet also slays herself next to his only lover Romeo. The story ends with both Montagues and Capulets finding their children’s hidden love and promising reconciliation between the two families.
During the play, the director tries to appeal that chasm can be only bridged by love, and people should rather choose love than hate and violence. The Romeo and Juliet clearly reveals his idea during the play as Romeo and Juliet’s love transcends a hatred and violence between two families.
In the play, the stage was decorated with a variety of color light and many background music. Characters were all wearing traditional costumes due to the background period and they even showed amazing dancing performance to raise the interest from the audience which made the atmosphere fun. But personally, I think the background music and stage lights were not perfectly suit to the story plot; the current hip-hop background music and the fancy stage light were far away from the time period of Romeo and Juliet. However, both the stage light and music were also important roles for audience to understand the plot easily that they expressed character’s emotions vicariously through showing different colors of light and tones of music depend on the situation.
In my opinion, Romeo was one of the most impressive characters. He was really well on being dramatic when he express his love toward Juliet; it was really memorable especially when he uses monologue to appeal his emotion of fall in love to Juliet in the party. In the part, I could felt how he was deeply in love with her at that moment. I really enjoyed his acting, and made me to think of Romeo in real life. Also their combination of acting was really realistic that I could feel and stand from Juliet’s perspective when she noticed that  Romeo had died because of her.

In closing, I enjoyed the play of Romeo and Juliet due to their great performance and acting; however, there were few holes that I could not understand some words because they talked really fast and there were some difficult traditional words. Except using hard words, the play was great and the characters revealed their roles so well. Even though I read Romeo and Juliet before many times, I felt interested while watching their performance. Additionally, I was able to recognize what the director was meant to express in his play, Romeo and Juliet’s sincere and intense love despite of the violence and hatred of two families.

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