It's almost ten o'clock where I'm at, and everyone in my house is asleep. And I'm really close to heading that way, too. Just wanted to post before I went to bed.
To wind down the week, I'm watching Baz Luhrman's "Romeo + Juliet", which is my favorite film adaptation of the play. Oh, Leonardo...
I've spent a lot of time with this play this week. As a part of my humanities class, we watched our school's production of R & J. Which was very good. As are just about all of the plays that my school does. But this was still quite good. Probably because I knew about half the cast, and it was really cool to see them bring these characters to life in a different...voice than the one I probably heard in my head the first five times I read this play in school. Both Benvolio and Tybalt were played by girls. And they rocked it.
The only downside was the fact that the immature junior high kids who were there with us in the audience (as a way to "enhance" their comprehension of the play, since that's one of the big literary focuses in 9th grade) would not stop talking during the scene changes, nor could they contain their wolf-whistles and laughter whenever Romeo and Juliet kissed. Which was just about every other scene. Learn some etiquette, kids. It'll take you places.
Initially, when I first read this play, I didn't like it. I found the "love at first sight" scenario a bit...juvenile. Yes, I was thinking this as a fourteen year old. But over the years, I've developed a liking to it. Seriously. Some of the best lines in literature are in this play. Like I said, my favorite adaptation is Baz Luhrman's film. Yes, it's very visually...stimulating (my English teacher called it "R & J on crack" [or acid]) and it's a little odd hearing Shakespearean vernacular in the context of a modern-day setting...But he does it so tastefully. And I think that is the difference between this and other "modern" takes on "Romeo and Juliet". There's another version I've watched, by Zefferelli, that was geared more toward using the actual sixteenth-century Verona setting. Traditional, I know...but it's been done before. Probably thousands of times. Sometimes, you need something different. Like substituting swords for personalized guns.
It's funny...we're introduced to the basic story of the "star-cross'd lovers" at a young age through just cultural permeation. I remember watching an episode of "Hey Arnold!" where the kids of PS-118 put on the play. But you hardly ever get the entire story until you read it for yourself. Which, typically, isn't until high school. And, often times, it's completely different than what we're exposed to.
I still prefer the original, though...
(Mercutio just died...sad day.)
(Ope, there went Tybalt as well...)
As a side note...while we studied this in ninth grade, my teacher showed us a video of this acting troupe called the Reduced Shakespeare Company doing the "abridged" version of Romeo and Juliet in about twelve minutes. I had never laughed so hard in my life. They (and by "they", I mean the three guys in the troupe) mess with the dialogue and makes jokes about the situations, but they're really smart about it. The version I watched even had a Star Wars reference in it. Shakespearean "purists" may find it blasphemous...but you have to have a heart of stone to find something in this worth your laughter. Not when you have two middle-aged men playing Juliet and the Nurse.
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