(Photo by Tim Trumble/Courtesy of Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts)Let’s get two things out of the way in the discussion of “romeo&juliet/VOID,” the latest play to take the stage at the Galvin Playhouse on the Tempe campus: (1) this is not a blasé rehashing of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet;” it’s an entirely different beast and (2) a straightforward narrative isn’t something you should expect from School of Film, Dance & Theatre faculty associate Chris Danowski’s play. You should expect to get lost — in the best possible way.
As the post-structuralist gem of “romeo&juliet/VOID” unfolds onstage, you will stumble — much like the characters themselves — through the uncertain dark, occasionally bumping against a fragment of truth that will resonate and send chills down your spine.
Read more coverage of ASU's Mainstage production "The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea."
“Don’t worry if you get lost,” notes the program. “Everyone here is lost. We are in the void.”
In the void of the underworld, we encounter a familiar cast of characters, each one playing a part he or she doesn't quite understand. We’ve got the famed immortal lovers Romeo (Andre Johnson, a theatre sophomore) and Juliet (Alexandra Jenkins, a theatre sophomore), who circle around each other forgetting the lyric poeticism that brought them together when they were alive. Rosaline (Tess Hernandez, a theatre senior), Romeo’s first love, is fed up with being forgotten.
Mercutio (Jeremiah James, a theatre junior) has gone a little cuckoo and just might be in love with Romeo. Susan (Teresa Simone, a Theatre for Youth graduate student), the daughter of Juliet’s old nurse, longs to experience the love that was denied to her due to her early death. It’s the Nurse (Lauren McKay, a theatre senior) who oversees this mass of lost souls in a costume adorned with somewhat distracting, beehive-esque shoulder pads, filling the role of a narrator who’s just as confused as everyone else.
(Photo by Tim Trumble/Courtesy of Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts)“Remember, this is a love story,” she intones several times throughout the show, and, yes, “romeo&juliet/VOID” is a love story, but it’s the shadows of love lost, love forgotten and love unrequited that rise to the forefront. Everyone misses someone here, even if they aren’t sure whom.
One of the few sources of certainty for Romeo and Juliet is their distaste for being icons of lost love. They share a great scene in which they lament the terrible job all the actors have done at portraying them over the centuries; apparently, they’ve been wearing all the wrong clothes and saying all the wrong lines.
Without Shakespeare to guide our Romeo and Juliet, they can’t seem to remember their grandiose Shakespearean verse, either. The archetypes of the star-crossed lovers and all their lyric poeticism are coming unglued here.
“Now that Shakespeare isn’t here, Romeo and Juliet have less to say,” Stephen Wrentmore, the show’s director and associate artistic director of the Arizona Theatre Company, said.
In a sense, this is what the play is all about, Wrentmore said.
“The whole construct of the piece … is the life and death of the iconography of love,” he said.
Of course, this central thematic nerve doesn’t deliver a clear cut narrative arc. Fortunately, there is no linear path through “romeo&juliet/VOID;” the show proceeds in many directions simultaneously. Virginia Woolf would applaud Danowski’s depiction of the disconnected, incoherent manner in which human consciousness moves through space.
Various paths and ideas crisscross throughout the show like synapses of a neural network, winding back on them and intersecting in unexpected ways. “It’s a play that’s not very interested in the linear; it’s not really interested in time as we understand time to function,” Wrentmore said.
Time lacks a nice linear thrust because the show is set in a void, which is an absence — a negation of time and space. Rendering the void onstage was one of the biggest challenges for Wrentmore.
“I wanted to get this sense of the nonstructure … so what I was playing with when putting this story together is how you can make non-solid structures feel solid,” he said.
Wrentmore took two main inspirations in the process of bringing physicality to the void for the first time. First, he looked at the extraordinarily detailed and vivid paintings of Caravaggio.
“I think that they’re made vivid by the blackness within which he sets him … these extraordinary and beautiful images are framed by darkness,” he said.
(Photo by Tim Trumble/Courtesy of Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts)Wrentmore also considered the illusion of solidity created when a shaft of sunlight comes into a dust-filled room. It looks like there’s a wall, but there are only the illuminated dust particles; the light itself is intangible.
Both of these inspirations clearly informed the light and media design of the show, which utilize nontoxic haze, video projections, sharp, angular lighting as well as softer lighting to give a surreal quality to the action on stage.
Hats off to every ounce of technical design that went into this show, which collectively elevates the script to a vibrant, living entity suffused with the power to casually rip your heart out of your chest. There are simply too many moments of harmony between the actors and their dynamic surroundings to list; however, there was one moment in particular that illuminates the show’s knack for unity of expression across multiple mediums.
In one scene, Mercutio is alone on the dimly lit stage, speaking of his deep connection with Romeo. As if reflecting his thoughts, a larger-than-life projection of Romeo plays behind Mercutio. The scene becomes all the more powerful because we as audience members are forced to confront the image of Romeo that must play unendingly in Mercutio’s lovesick mind.
Bringing such a complex show to fruition necessitated a great deal of collaboration among everyone working on the show, which Wrentmore encouraged.
“I don’t have a master plan; what I have is talent that I put in the space, and then we work together,” he said.
Because “romeo&juliet/VOID” is Wrentmore’s first ASU production, he was thrilled to work with students who weren’t held back from experimentation by tradition. Since this is the first production run of the play by Phoenician Chris Danowski, there was no precedent for what the show could look like, which allowed for even more experimentation.
“What they have is an ambition to explore themselves as artists; they have the confidence to make mistakes, and they have the confidence to make bold decisions,” Wrentmore said.
The ambition and boldness of everyone involved in ASU Mainstage’s production of “romeo&juliet/VOID” has paid off. Fragments of beautifully rendered truth come into stark relief in this void; you just have to be willing to get lost first. This show is not to be missed.
Catch “romeo&juliet/VOID” for $8 (if you’re a student) at the Galvin Playhouse Thursday – Saturday at 7:30 p.m. or Sunday at 2 p.m.
Reach the reporter at zachariah.webb@asu.edu or chat about post-structuralism with him on Twitter @zachariahkaylar.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
