A Plague on All Your Houses!

[February 14th, 2007] O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art there so many Romeos?" No play is so ubiquitous on Portland stages as The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Since November 2005, the city and its bedroom communities have seen six productions of the play, plus one reading and one concert of music inspired by Shakespeare's tale. A new staging has opened at the Blue Monkey Theater, and three more are scheduled for this year. That's a lot of star-crossing. And the Montagues have come in all shapes and sizes. There's a 14-year-old Romeo. There's a Romeo who dresses in clothes from a different century than his parents' outfits. There's a Romeo who quotes Keats. There's a Romeo who plays basketball with the Friar. There's a Romeo who doesn't die.

The play itself seems in no danger of expiring. But why has it proven so enduringly popular with major stages and neighborhood companies? "I've thought about that a lot," says Sarah Jane Hardy, who's directing one of two R&J productions at the Northwest Children's Theater this spring. (Hers is the one where the lovers die; the other production's ending is signaled by the title Romeo and Juliet—Together (and Alive!) at Last.) "It's a production with a lot of angles, and I think that each theater approaches it in their own particular way." The Blue Monkey, currently staging a "rock/Goth" interpretation featuring Romeo's hoop skills, finds one angle in the canonical status of the play. "The public schools start reading Romeo and Juliet about this time," says Administrative Director Patty Blodgett. "It was a natural choice for those teenagers to work on."

But if there's one reason why theaters will always have a Capulet, it's best expressed by Oregon State University visiting faculty member Scott Palmer, who directed the Keats-infused R&J last August. "Ticket sales," he says. "One of the reasons people do Romeo and Juliet is that it sells well. It's one of those plays that audiences think they know, and so they'll see it again and again." Northwest Classical Theatre Company Artistic Director Grant Turner offers the same mercenary sentiment: "More than anything, people like romances. And we producers figured out that this play is box-office gold. Nobody can deny that it puts people in the seats."

—AARON MESH.