Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a well-known story, and it has been performed by many people throughout the ages. After being performed over and over again, it is undoubtedly the biggest challenge for the director to make an interesting interpretation that does not fall into the cliché. Happily, what I saw in Shakespeare Unplugged - Romeo and Juliet was not an over-the-top, word-chewing, nauseating love story, but a fresh, youthful and timeless piece of theater.
In this play, the director deliberately chose five male actors to perform a classic love story like Romeo and Juliet, and it is easy to think that the director is trying to play with the gender issue or to make a gay-themed play, but in fact, the director is just trying to grasp the Shakespearean-era theater, "only male actors are allowed to be on the stage," and recreate a modern-day Shakespearean-era theater performance. In fact, the director just wants to grasp the quality of Shakespeare's plays that "only boys can act on stage", and bring back the stage performance of Shakespeare's era in modern times. Without the need for flashy staging and props, the performance returns to the physicality of the actors, and even though the play is performed by male actors, the female characters are still believable and accepted by the audience without any irony.
Having seen the movie Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo, it's not hard to notice some similarities in the style of performance between the two plays: the director portrays Romeo and Juliet as modern, not as Shakespearean characters who are far removed from the audience. The characters in the play do not wear expensive evening dresses or dinner suits, but instead appear in a leather jacket, leather pants, riding boots, turban, silver jewelry, showing a strong punk style, as if the rebellious young men and women in general, their bold and arbitrary concept of love and the current teenage boys and girls are no different. Perhaps because of this reason, even if Romeo and Juliet this whirlwind love in the eyes of outsiders seem so sudden, so thoughtless, but still can make the audience heart **** sound.
Compared to other versions of Romeo and Juliet performed in the past, some of which focused on the poignancy of this tragic love, and some of which focused on the romanticism of the process of the lovers, I think the director in Shakespeare Unplugged - Romeo and Juliet, emphasized more on the time of this love affair, Romeo and Juliet, the young couple is only fourteen, Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers are only fourteen or fifteen years old, they should have the kind of naive and lovely belonging to the young boys and girls, they face the attitude of feelings is simple, not like the adult love so complicated, they are in love at first sight with each other, because they are in the feelings of the experience is not very rich, when they suddenly have a good feeling for a boy or a girl, it is very easy to fall into it, can not be extricated. In the ball, Romeo holds the ice cream in his hand and the balloon in Juliet's hand, we can feel their youth and innocence from the external image, and through the physical performance of the two actors, I also saw the cute, capricious and sweetness of a 14 or 15 year old boy or girl whose heart is filled with love; because the two families have been enemies for generations, they must arm themselves with their own appearances, however, in their rebelliousness, However, underneath their rebellious, violent and bloodthirsty exterior, Romeo and Juliet are actually naive and innocent at heart, and they can do anything for love. I think one of the lucky points than other audiences is that these two actors happen to be my classmates. While enjoying this classic romantic drama, I can obviously feel that they are far away from the usual kind of extremely mature big boys, and in the 100 minutes of the performance on stage, they are indeed the 14 and 15 year old playful Romeo and the innocent Juliet. Enjoying the performances of the two protagonists, I would smile because I saw them face this love that kind of simple and lovely, and there is a natural sweetness back on the stage.
Though the play doesn't feature a glamorous stage or much in the way of props, I did like the use of a scaffolding as a backdrop and a spring-loaded platform in the center of the stage. In order to match the overall punk style, the stage design also uses metallic materials, iron scaffolding and spring platforms, even if they are not very flashy, but they have substantial benefits: the scaffolding on the upper stage is both the balcony of the Capulets' house and the dressing room of the actors in multiple roles in the play, and through this scaffolding, Romeo and Juliet even exchanged tokens and made a promise to each other for life; the scaffolding on the right stage is both the performance stage of the musicians and the residence of the medicine man, Moucheboume, and the house of the drug dealer. The eagle on the right stage is both the performance stage of the musicians and the residence of the medicine seller, and Mouketsu's dead soul performs through this eagle, so that the audience can see how the spirit of that tragic death expresses its dissatisfaction and anger towards the people of the Kapleys; the spring stage of the center stage is both the hall of the Kapleys' house and the garden, as well as the church and the square, and above the spring stage, the actors can sit, stand, lie down, and jump, even if the content is mostly a non-physical performance, the use of props (e.g., spreading on the spring stage) is also a good example of this kind of performance. Even if the content is mostly performed without objects, through the physical performance of the actors and the use of small props (for example, spreading a white or red cloth on the spring stage), it is possible to make changes in the scene without the use of lights to darken the scene. In my opinion, in modern theater, most directors have relied too much on the light and darkness of the lights as the demarcation of scene changes, and seldom think about why modern theater has to rely on the dark-field effect, which is similar to that of a television or a movie camera transition, to switch between each scene, when the oldest plays were still able to make scene changes even without lighting effects. If we go back to the essence of theater performance, modern theater should not adopt such a tricky (just dimming the lights on the stage is too easy) way to deal with the transition between each scene. Therefore, I really appreciate that this play is able to use the stage for a single scene, and that there is no dark field to interrupt the audience's attention in the 100-minute performance, and at the same time it can make the play complete and not make the audience feel abrupt in the transition from scene to scene. The fact that this is the case is very rare.
However, going back to the way the set was presented, the two pieces of set hanging on the scaffolding were a collage of images of street graffiti culture on stage, in an attempt to deepen the youthful color and punk style of the entire play, which was a bold and innovative attempt, after all, mixing modern teenage culture with a classic western romantic drama is bound to get polarized evaluations. Such extreme reactions are due to the cultural differences of the times and the different perspectives on things, which I won't discuss here. What I would like to point out is that the fonts of "Montague" and "Capulet" on the left and right sets are too careful and moderate, which is contrary to the play's atmosphere of madness, boldness, and rebelliousness for the sake of one's own love; on the other hand, the correlation between the street graffiti pictures used for the sets is not close enough, which makes it difficult for the audience to read from the pictures the designers' work directly when watching the sets. On the other hand, the connection between the images of street graffiti used in the set is not close enough, which makes the audience not be able to read the meaning that the designer expects to convey directly from the images, and the effect of the presentation is inevitably discounted.
It is worth mentioning that the director has added rock music to Shakespeare Unplugged - Romeo and Juliet. Not only do the four musicians play their instruments live to change the scene or to create the mood of some of the episodes, but several important episodes are also sung by the actors, which makes the whole show lively and interesting, as if attending a concert that makes people's emotions surge, and highlights the importance of the play's pomp and circumstance. It also emphasizes the punk style of the play (because when people talk about "punk", they tend to associate it with heavy metal bands and rock music). What is most special is that the director, in dealing with the part of the play where Tibat and Mouketsu duel with their swords drawn, transformed their "swords" into "electric guitars" and the swordfighting scene into a guitar competition. cleverly avoids the ever-so-realistic gory fights on stage, but also combines it with the aforementioned rock 'n' roll playing. On the downside, several of the actors seem to have been poorly trained in the vocal department, so that whenever they sing their voices are noticeably weakened, with a lack of clarity and a tendency to go off-key, which is more than just an auditory distraction for the audience, which is a great pity.
In addition, Shakespeare's poetic English words are rendered in a Chinese translation that retains their rhythmic nature. The beauty of Shakespeare's plays lies in their exquisite language, and it is difficult to retain the rhythmic nature of the translations. In this play, although the director intends to deal with such a language barrier, choosing the translation that is closest to the poetic vocabulary in an effort to preserve the rhythmic beauty of Shakespeare's words, he still fails to achieve perfection, and in some lines, due to the lack of rhymes at the end of the lines, the power of the rhythmic integrity of the text is missing; this is especially evident in some of the sung lyrics, which are directly adapted from the Chinese translations of the lines, instead of being rewritten by the music designer. The music designers did not rewrite the lyrics of the songs, but simply used the lines from the Chinese translations, not wanting to destroy the original meaning of Shakespeare's words, which is fine, but to the audience, it inevitably gives them pangs, and it always feels as if they are forced to put non-rhyming lyrics into a song, which is not right for them. I think there is a huge difference between the classical English of Shakespeare's time and the language used in Taiwan today. Whether it's a change in time or space, the transformation of words has been a test for contemporary directors attempting to adapt Shakespeare's plays, and whether Shakespeare's poetic words can be used in Taiwan's contemporary theaters.