Oh, Happy Dagger
Over wonder what happened to the Montagues and Capulets after Romeo and Juliet offed themselves?
Me, neither. But I’m sure glad someone did.
Playwright Sharman Macdonald, whose After Juliet is having its U.S. premiere at the Coterie Theatre, assumes that her mostly teen audiences have already absorbed Romeo and Juliet somewhere — if not in school then perhaps by renting the 1996 Baz Luhrmann version of the story — and sets her play after the young lovers have just stopped squirming.
The Coterie’s muscular and magnetic production is directed by Sidonie Garrett, who, as artistic director of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, knows shit from Shakespeare. But that doesn’t mean that After Juliet plays merely like fan fiction, something written in the style of the Bard and passed off as a long-lost sequel. No, like Luhrmann’s film, this play borrows plenty from the Elizabethan playwright, but just as often drinks from a more contemporary well.
In the wake of Romeo and Juliet’s deaths — indeed, in the shadow of their very tomb — the two noble families of Verona continue their acrid relations and produce yet another unlikely romance. Rosaline (Nina Manni), Juliet’s cousin, is in a hot-and-cold flirting situation with Benvolio (Will Fowler), Romeo’s best friend. Costumed by Jen Myers Ecton to be a bit of a goth, Rosaline is as in touch with her masculine side, as Benvolio (with ruffles and spiky blond highlights) is with his feminine. Perhaps that’s the draw — they want to complete themselves. Their friends and family, though, aren’t having any of it.
Despite being a Montague, Valentine (Javier Rivera) mercilessly taunts Benvolio about his crush. (In one scene, they argue in an homage to Taming of the Shrew.) Rosaline’s half-sister, Livia (Courtney Bullis), tries to dissuade her sib with a more pungent appeal: The corpses of Romeo and Juliet are barely cold.
Meanwhile, other plots unfold: Petruchio (Robert Bern) is about to win an election, and he has a purposeful fan in the seductive Alice (Kaci Gober, surely the next Stockard Channing). Wielding their own connections to the Capulets are Alice’s sensible dresser, Rhona (Marisa Wall); a couple of goofy pranksters named Gianni (Josh Shirley) and Lorenzo (Nathan Louis Jackson); and one very mysterious pair, Helena (Bilicia Charnelle Harris) and her mentally impaired yet spiritually touched friend, Bianca (Kristy Sharon Thomas). Even in fleeting scenes, they all reveal pangs of emotion from the recent deaths. Suicide may be selfish, but it’s never painless.
Commenting throughout the show — but without speech — is Drummer (Rodney Rayford Johnson), whose ubiquitous drumsticks serve various functions. He opens the show by beating rhythms across the set. In hindsight, it’s a suggestion to pay attention; the play is going to move like a bullet train. Sometimes they warn of impending violence. And he seems to have an assistant-director role, using the sticks as pointers to facilitate cast members’ exits and entrances. It’s as if Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream had joined the company of Stomp.
Macdonald’s script steps assertively into the repercussions of the deaths and, just as deftly, right back out again. The play wears the mist of a love story but carries the weight of generations of violence. The families haven’t learned anything. Toward the end, when characters are made to choose sides, a shroud of dread blankets the theater. As one character says when more killing seems all but inevitable, at least if you die young you leave behind a good-looking corpse.
