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Rashad beautifully captures the humor of Juliet as a giddy teenager but also flashes a scary smile when she's hiding her grim plans from her parents. While Bloom has his abs, Rashad has her own natural weapon: Two enormous eyes filled with emotion. The two leads are often overshadowed by some very savvy veterans, especially a meaning-well-but-doomed Brent Carver as the Friar, a puffed up and quick to anger Chuck Cooper as Lord Capulet, a leather-clad rock star Christian Camargo playing Mercutio like a member of Oasis, and a delightful Jayne Houdyshell as the Nurse who almost steals the show. Each has little touches
-- a leer from Mercutio, a sip from a flask by the Nurse or an exasperated bellow from Lord Capulet
-- that bring life to this play; stuff like the motorcycle, not so much. The racial dimension of the cast -- Capulets are black, Montagues are white
-- really only serves as visual cues of fighting families. Many feared it would be exploitative, but it doesn't seem so. Scenic designer Jesse Poleshuck frames the action in a gritty, timeless place. A back wall breaks into several parts that are reconfigured nicely to give shape to the play's events, but the sand is just plain weird and the tubes that spew fire makes the whole thing look like "Romeo and Juliet" performed inside a giant Weber gas grill. There's a lot of other stuff -- a live cellist, balloons, industrial house music, messenger bags, a real bird, a huge bell, actors running through the audience, a swing
-- that distract. Romeo may show up on a Triumph but the show, trying hard, unfortunately isn't one. ___ Online:
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