In 1968 when I was madly in love with my Rosemary (not Rosaline) whom I married that year in Mexico City we saw Romeo and Juliet. I had to point out to her that Olivia Hussey was 17 and that she had been born in Buenos Aires. Much was written then about Michael York’s Tybalt and John McEnery’s Mercutio. The former went on to better things and the latter sort of faded away. As much as I liked Michael York I have always preferred Basil Rathbone in that 1936 Romeo and Juliet. He was much darker. He was scary.

By 1970 my Rosemary and I were teaching English at large American companies in Mexico City. I had a class of 8 women (all executive assistants, the term used on the day). I decided to teach them (they never suspected) English with a Texan accent. I taught them to speak through their noses. During a three month term we ended each class with a 8 minute read of Shakespeare’s play. My knowledge of the play then is based on those three months of Texas twang.

My memory tells me that the second stage version of Romeo and Juliet is the one that my Rosemary and I saw on Friday, June 10. It was a Bard on the Beach production directed by Kim Collier. Since we have seen many a production by Collier we expected surprises. There were many but one I did not foresee was the presence of an angel in the audience.

I watched Bernard Cuffling for the duration of the first act. On his face I saw either smiles or laughter. Here was an actor enjoying his busman’s holiday.

Myformer Vancouver Magazine friend, Les Wiseman told me (many times) that you wrote only that which you knew something about or else you consulted a person who did. That was my tack. I talked, before the play began with Shakespeare scholar and UBC Professor Errol Durbach. I asked him about youth in previous Romeo and Juliet productions. He cited a not-as-well known 1996 film by Baz Luhrmann with Leonardo di Caprio (then 22) and Claire Danes (17). He told me that it was a good film but that it lacked gravitas as the actors were too young. Durbach did not predict that anytime soon we will have a stage production or a film with a 14-year-old Juliet (the age in Shakespeare’s play).

Bernard Cuffling added to this by saying that the words that Juliet says in the play would be out of the range (realistically) of any 14-year-old. And he told me, “I think Hailey Gillis (24) is very good. And she looks so Roman.” I would have added that both Gillis and Basil Rathbone’s Tybalt have similar Roman noses. When I mentioned to Cuffling (not having yet read Harold Bloom's chapter on the play later that evening) I asked him if the first half of the play is a comedy. Perhaps Collier helped by the performances of Andrew McNee as Mercutio, Ben Elliot’s Benvolio, Jennifer Lines’s Nurse, Andrew Cownden’s Peter and Scott Bellis as Friar Laurence to add a bit more comedy. Cuffling looked at me seriously and told me the second act is no comedy. We both agreed that while the two young actors, Andrew Chown (a most winsome and athletic one) as Romeo and Hailey Gillis’s Juliet are (as far as this city is concerned) not so well known the supporting actors are all so good that I wonder how any other good Vancouver theatre company is going to cope for the summer without them. That long bench of superb actors turns the whole idea of the usual play around. In Bard’s Romeo and Juliet the cast is star studded.

My Rosemary who usually dislikes most everything had two very positive comments. “I think that Scott Bellis is superb as usual. And I really like Jennifer Lines who more and more sounds like Katherine Hepburn.”

In the late evening I read Harold Bloom. This Shakespeare bible is at my night table during Bard and it is perhaps the only quality I share with Christopher Gaze, the Artistic Director of Bard on the Beach. If you check on the right hand side of the photograph here with his wife Jennifer you will not the heavy tome on his night table. 

Bloom mentions several times that Mercutio pretty well runs away with the play and that Shakespeare had to kill him in order to continue with the play. The important plot twist is the interference by Romeo that kills Mercutio who is unaware of Romeo’s marriage to Juliet. Bloom translates for the ignorant (me!) some of Mercutio’s words. As an example:

I love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

Now he will sit under a medlar tree

And wish his mistress where that kind of fruit

As maids called medlars when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse, and though a poperin pear!

[II.i.33-38]

Bloom explains (who would have known?)

Mercutio’s reference is to Rosaline, Romeo’s beloved before he falls, at first glance, in love with Juliet, who instantly reciprocates. The medlar, rotten with ripeness, popularly was believed to have the likeness of the female genitalia and “to meddle” meant to perform sexual intercourse. Mercutio happily also cites a popular name for the medlar, the open-arse, as well as the poperin pear, at once pop-her-in her open arse, and the slang name for a French pear, the Poperingle (named for a town near Ypres). This is the antithetical prelude to a scene that famously concludes with Juliet’s couplet:

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Of Nurse Bloom writes: The two fatal figures in the play are its two liveliest comics, Mercutio and the Nurse…Juliet’s Nurse, despite her popularity, is altogether a much darker figure. Like Mercutio she is inwardly cold, even toward Juliet, whom she has raised (and we find out that Juliet had a “twin sister” who died called Susan.  But not exactly as Susan was the Nurse’s daughter who died at birth so the Nurse then became Juliet’s wet-nurse). Her language captivates us as does Mercutio’s, but Shakespeare gives both of them hidden natures much at variance with their exuberant personalities.

There were two further surprises. Since Christopher Gaze always introduces the season and the first performance of a play (like his buddy, Artistic Director Bill Millerd of the Arts Club Theatre Company) this time around Director Kim Collier seconded (I am going to introduce all the performances of R&J, Alex. Kim asked me to do the opening Chorus speech because I am welcoming the audience and I can just flow into it seamlessly. Christopher) him to perform (and a fine performance it was!) the prologue to the play.

The second surprise was one of those famous food trucks. It was there,  before the play began, to left side of the portable washrooms. Tables had been set aside for the hungry-before culture fans. I was told by one of the gentlemen in the truck (Mathew) that they will be there for other opening performances and for special days.

I would like to point out a few more things. Dawn Petten, who plays Lady Capulet is one of Vancouver’s finest comedy actresses (I am old fashioned and I am partial to words like actor, dominatrix and aviatrix). Here she does a really serious role and plays to the hilt the coldness (jealousy of the Nurse?) of a detached mother to Juliet. And David McCormick, the Fight Director, has given both Mercutio and Benvolio some fine humorous activities with their foils. Sound Designer Brian Linds produced what must be the first ever presence of heavy metal in a Shakespeare play. Plus before the play there was some fine 20^th century modern piano music that I rather enjoyed.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;

The evening was most satisfying and the only other Romeo and Juliet that I can compare it is to one years ago in which I watched Evelyn Hart dance.