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Forbidden
Love: Our Favorite Kind
Rekindling the fire in the belly of Romeo and Juliet,
as seen through the eyes and lips and hearts of four
Catholic boys at Stages
by
Ann Walton Sieber
Young
love. Forbidden love. Fist-through-the-wall. Pining.
Heartbreak-for-no-reason. Faint-dead-away-from-the-altogether-too-muchness-of-it.
Love, love, love. Great god almighty, spare us all.
But ... if for some crazy misguided Valentine's Day
reason, you're wanting to voluntarily drink of the romantic
drug, what better place to imbibe than at that fountainhead
of amour, that love story from which were fashioned
all other love stories, Romeo and Juliet?
And
has Stages got a Romeo and Juliet for you. Adapted by
New York playwright Joe Calarco, the premise of Shakespeare's
R&J is that four adolescent Catholic schoolboys have
stolen a copy of Romeo and Juliet, after it has been
banned by their school as too full of "lust." The teenagers
cut classes, convene in a basement, and start acting
out the script, with giddy, almost hysterical mania.
But the more they get into it, the more the love story
takes them over, especially the boy playing Juliet and
the boy playing Romeo. And then there's that Kiss. They
surprise each other and they surprise themselves with
the depth of their feeling. And then there's that Kiss.
An off-Broadway hit, Shakespeare's R&J is being given
its Houston premiere in an intense, kinetic production
directed by Stages artistic director Rob Bundy. Bundy
picked the play because it is about the "forbidden,"
and this energetic charismatic theater impresario loves
to take on whatever's controversial, enlivening, and
likely to get an audience all riled up and hot and bothered.
"The
world of R&J is a world full of danger," writes Calarco,
R&J's creator. "What could be more dangerous than that
first forbidden kiss of literature's most famous lovers?
The first forbidden kiss of two schoolboys. Put those
boys in a school where Catholicism reigns, patriarchy
rules, and where simply reading Shakespeare is forbidden,
and you have a world pulsating with repressed hysteria."
So,
is this a gay Romeo and Juliet?
Not
exactly. "Sexuality is a HUGE issue with this, a huge
issue," says Bundy. "[But] when the characters are actually
taken over, when the boys are taken over by the character,
it's more person to person. It becomes about human connection
through the aspect of sex than it does about sexual
orientation....
"There
is an energy that I think we forget," Bundy continues
animatedly, "because I think most of us keep our energy
up here [points to his head]. But there's an energy
just below the belly button, that's hot and profound
and they [the actors] found it. It was just wonderful
watching their bodies sort of expand and their faces
flush and they like floated out of this building. It
was really exhilarating to watch ... it was about that
fire in the belly."
When
Romeo approaches Juliet on her balcony, he swears that
he loves her, and his name is inconsequential, even
though it is the name of her family's mortal enemies.
For the boys discovering desire in Shakespeare's R&J,
just as names cease to matter, so too do genders: So
compelling is that love-fire, it really stops mattering
if they are boys, or boys playing a boy and a girl.
What matters is the passionate discovery of their first
kiss.
"[With]
OutSmart," Bundy says, "the question is probably, is
this a coming-out moment? ... And I don't think so.
I don't want the audience to be so clear about that.
I wouldn't mind if what it really said to the straight
world is that this is an investigation into our own
homosexuality, which we all have aspects of. ... Even
as a gay man, what I don't want to do is make the easy
choice, which is to say, ŒYes, all these guys are going
to become great husbands to each other.' They may become
great husbands, perhaps even better husbands to women
because of this event. ... As Falstaff says in Henry
IV, 'Judge ye, my masters.' So I am letting the audience
decide and bring their own perception to it."
So,
in a way, it's like a coming-out play for the audience?
"Exactly.
I like that. It's not a coming-out play for the characters,
it's a coming-out play for the audience."
Shakespeare's
R&J continued its run through Feb. 13 at Stages, 3201
Allen Parkway, 522-8243 (713/52-STAGE).
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