Shakespeare on Love
Romeo and Juliet at the Fenimore
The Glimmer Globe Theatre’s vibrant production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Fenimore Art Museum provides fresh evidence that local theater is alive and well in Cooperstown.
Staged by director (and Romeo) Michael Henrici amid the rocker versus mod backdrop of early 1960s Britain (think Jets and Sharks), the Glimmer Globe cast handles Shakepeare’s knotty, pun-driven 16th century English with aplomb. The cast is uniformly fine: as the Nurse, Mary Fralick almost steals the show; as the exuberantly abusive Mercutio, Nadel Henvile dominates the stage every time she is on it, so much so that we regret Mercutio has to die quite so soon. Peter Exton, as Friar Lawrence, is the perennial well-intentioned liberal who makes a mess of everything.
The challenge for every production of “Romeo & Juliet” is to make the teen-age title characters, and their sudden volcanic love, believable and compelling. Shakespeare himself was no fool for love, as even the titles of his plays suggest: e.g., “Much Ado About Nothing” and “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” This is the author who bequeathed his “second best bed” to his wife Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare understood that human love includes a good deal of self-delusion and calculation. As Mercutio observes, “If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.” Tom Russo’s Capulet captures every exhausted parent’s exasperation when his plans are frustrated by his daughter’s refusal to bend to his wishes: after all I’ve spent, he seems to say, on ballet lessons and horseback riding and boy-band concerts and all the lacrosse practices I had to drive you to, this is how you pay me back?
The production doesn’t try to persuade us to believe in Romeo and Juliet’s love; Danielle Henrici’s acting does it for us, whether in capturing the exaltation of their first meeting, her panic when encountering delays and obstructions to their wedding plans, her brief radiant morning with Romeo after the secret nuptials, and her clear-eyed commitment to sharing their fate. This Juliet’s integrity sets her apart from her family and her peers.
The multi-talented Michael Henrici’s Romeo is an appealing young rake, wise enough to recognize the real thing when he sees her. Danielle Henrici’s luminous Juliet justifies his judgment; but the whole company warrants our gratitude and admiration.
The Fenimore Art Museum’s Glimmer Globe production runs Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., through August 11.