“So there’s a kind of aliveness in the moment, in particular between the two of them, but I think generally in our company, that’s really refreshing. And what’s been great about these two is that they are incredibly alive in the moment - two actors who, uncommon in my experience, are incapable of a false move. “And that means you go into one of these scenes you think you know, and you have license to discover it afresh. And there’s a certain sense in which everybody feels they own it, and so that gives us permission to own it, too.”Īfter, all, “if the whole world thinks they know what ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is, why shouldn’t the three of us know what it is, too? “The first half is very funny - unusually so, in my experience of the play. “It’s a very quirky production that we’re doing, full of music. “I think the familiarity of the play is a kind of freedom,” Edelstein says, chatting alongside Jacobson and Moten during a rehearsal break. It’s the place where Edelstein and the cast will dig at finding their own interpretation of a piece that has not only been produced near-continuously for hundreds of years, but has become cultural shorthand for passionate romance. It’s one of a dwindling number of Shakespeare works he has not yet staged Edelstein’s Bard past directorial ventures include a production of “As You Like It” that starred Gwyneth Paltrow, and a Central Park staging of “Julius Caesar” with Jeffrey Wright.Īrtists often like to talk of working in a “creative sandbox,” but Edelstein’s “Romeo and Juliet” unfolds in a literal one - the centerpiece of Takeshi Kata’s scenic design. The Globe production, which closes the theater’s summer Shakespeare fest in the outdoor Davies Festival Theatre, is Edelstein’s first try at “Romeo and Juliet” as a director, although he’s been involved with the play in other roles as part of his previous work at New York’s Public Theater. What happens to our children when we make selfish decisions?” Liberated by the familiar “That’s what the play, I think, is asking people to reckon with. “That’s what the piece is about.”įor Edelstein, the play - whose plot is driven by the bad blood between the Capulet and Montague clans - compels those who have kids (himself included) to think: “How are the decisions we’re making, or failing to make, right now going to play out 20 years after we’re not here, in their lives? “The focus is on the pure, beautiful, delicate, fragile love of these two uncommonly witty and sensitive souls, that is snuffed out by an irrational hatred held by their parents,” says Edelstein of his Shakespeare Festival production. But the tragedy is, these two barely get to connect in the first place, in a story that pivots on maddening near-misses and promises unfulfilled.Īnd for that, says Edelstein, the play places clear blame on a festering legacy to which Romeo and Juliet are hapless heirs. “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” as Juliet says at scene’s end, after the pair memorably profess their love. Louisa Jacobson, as Juliet, and Aaron Clifton Moten, as Romeo, are reaching toward each other - fingers splayed, arms outstretched as far as they can go - as she perches on a tall platform. Speaking of which: One moment during a Globe rehearsal of the balcony scene on a late-July afternoon seems to symbolize the aching divide between these two “star-cross’d lovers.” But Edelstein is not in the business of turning great literary tragedy into some kind of happily-ever-after, and in the new staging of “Romeo and Juliet” he’s directing for the Globe, a lot more is destined to come between the pair than the railing of that famous balcony.
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