Raymond O. Caldwell Reimagines ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Folger Theatre
By • October 17, 2024 0 23
For the first show in Folger Theatre’s ‘Whose Democracy?’ season, director Raymond O. Caldwell refreshes “Romeo and Juliet” for a D.C. audience by transposing the Montague-Capulet feud onto our country’s fractured political landscape. Here, the Montagues are Democrats, the Capulets are Republicans, and both parties are vying for power in a contentious presidential election cycle all too similar to our own.
The groundwork for this creative choice is laid even before Act I officially commences. As attendees make their ways to their seats, pre-filmed political advertisements starring the main cast flash across the stage’s many screens. These advertisements are the results of a fascinating experiment: to create them, Caldwell and his creative team extracted snippets of notable speeches from this year’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions and used AI to restructure them into lines of Shakespearean meter.
“I think those videos really do give you a sense of this world,” Folger Theatre’s Artistic Director Karen Ann Daniels said. “In my brain I kind of think about it like Times Square a little bit when you walk into the theater and are like ‘which screen do I look at?’ It’s that feeling of slight overwhelm I think that really helps to create sort of the heightened nature and the tension of the world that is ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”
Though this ambitious idea might sound gimmicky, Caldwell tackles this bold twist masterfully thanks to, as he states in the playbill, his genuine investment in one of ‘Romeo and Juliet’’s overlooked undercurrents: how “the tragedy of our society play[s] out on the bodies of young people.” Keeping this youthful perspective in mind, he holds up a mirror—an iPhone camera?—to modern politics without spoon-feeding us lukewarm social commentary, incorporating timely quips referencing online life and our bleak state of affairs without compromising the impact of the Bard’s beloved masterpiece.
Cole Taylor as Romeo and Caro Reyes Rivera as Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Folger Theatre. Photo by Erika Nizborski.
“We know all the outcomes, we know all the characters, that part’s not a surprise,” Daniels said. “The surprise is can we tell this story in a context that feels that it will connect with the people we are right now?”
In addition to re-mapping the play’s central conflict onto the chaos of Capitol Hill, Caldwell also transforms much of this tried-and-true tearjerker into a laugh-out-loud good time without deflating the devastation of the ending. Often, he accomplishes this playful spin by poking fun at our relationship with technology. For instance, Juliet delivers the iconic “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” line as she’s trying to find her beau’s Instagram account during the balcony scene and Friar Laurence is reimagined as an evangelical influencer. Though Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers, like our partisan divides, is still tragic, Caldwell offers us brevity through familiarity.
To that point of familiarity, even amidst this modern interpretation of the show’s setting, the ill-fated relationship between the titular leads remains—as it should be—at the show’s bleeding heart. While Romeo and Juliet’s romance is often dismissed by contemporary audiences on account of its rapid onset and foolhardy nature, Cole Taylor approaches Romeo’s lovesickness with a refreshing level of respect and compassion.
“They are young kids and this is the first time, so you have permission to just be so excited about falling in love for the first time,” Taylor said.
Playing opposite starry-eyed Romeo is Caro Reyes Rivera as Juliet. Headstrong, introspective, and tender-hearted, Rivera is positively riveting in her portrayal of Miss Capulet. Still, though Taylor and Rivera are equally strong individually, they are even stronger together—look no further than their swoon-worthy deliverance of the “pilgrim” scene following their masqueraded first meeting for proof of their sizzling chemistry.
“Since the beginning it’s just been like ‘oh, we got this great chemistry for free?’” Rivera said. “For some reason it just works and we’re both having so much fun that, when that is happening, it is undeniable to the audience as well.”
Tickets for ‘Romeo and Juliet’ can be purchased here. The show runs at The Folger Shakespeare Theatre from Oct. 1 through Nov. 10—notably, the show will run through the end of election season.
