Romeo and Juliet at NC Stage Co.
“Shakespeare is dead. We’re not.”
I can think of no better summary of the Nemesis Theatre Company ethos than this line, proclaimed toward the end of its new production of Romeo and Juliet at NC Stage Co.. Since 2020, artistic director Melon Wedick has been treating the Bard’s plays as vibrant and living documents, blending reverence for the past with fearless experiment.
In a way, I see the Nemesis approach as akin to the bluegrass revival in music, where young players like Billy Strings combine the raw materials and methods of tradition with modern forms and attitudes. To reimagine Romeo and Juliet is like putting a jam-band spin on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”: an audacious choice given the ubiquity of the source material, but incredible if pulled off.
Wedick and company pull it off.
From its very start, the play bursts with new ideas. Out is Shakespeare’s famous prologue announcing “two households, alike in dignity;” in is a rapid-fire introduction of the characters and tensions between the Capulets and Montagues. General mayhem erupts, and the eye feasts on the postmodern fantasia of Kayren McKnight’s costume design, where military fatigues,Chuck Taylor high-tops, three-piece suits, and Renaissance jester motley somehow make sense together in their shared evocation of the roles they garb.
That breakneck pace continues through the whole first act. Wedick’s minimal set — four large boxes and a couple of large doors on wheels — allows for nearly seamless scene changes, and there’s almost always some sort of background action or side conversation going on. Much of the dialogue feels ripped from the present day, full of offhand profanity and pop-culture references to the Spice Girls. There is no stuffiness here. The play breathes, laughs, and moves like the titular couple’s instant infatuation itself.
Wedick’s casting and script changes place a queer lens over that romance. Juliet (Dwight Chiles) is nonbinary; Romeo (Jon Stockdale) finds himself irresistibly drawn to them after crashing a ball thrown by their parents, discarding his affections for the conventionally attractive, cisgender Rosaline (Elizabeth DeVault). Juliet’s parents (Jason Phillips and Paula O’Brien) instead want their child to marry the County Paris (Elli Murray), here portrayed as a mature and dapper trans man.
Those choices add layers of contemporary resonance while retaining the archetypal core of Shakespeare’s love story — and of any love story. Stockdale’s Romeo remains an ardent, questing force, needing to express and understand the mystery of his love. Chiles’ Juliet is receptive, reflective, and overwhelmed by their unexpected strength of emotion.
The two portray a complementarity of souls that transcends the accidents of gender identity and social division. It’s a natural extension of Shakespeare’s immortal sentiment: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Special kudos should go to Christine Hellman, the production’s assistant director and intimacy choreographer, for guiding a tender, vulnerable physicality in the expression of that love.
The rush of their romance is riven by a street brawl between the warring families that leaves Tybalt (an intense Eli Hamilton) and Mercutio (an irresistibly charming Selah Atwood) dead, and Romeo banished. Wedick’s direction makes time stand still for the tragic moment, with the cast arrayed in a classical stage tableau, while Abby Auman’s lighting sucks the warmth from the room. Given the effervescent energy of what’s transpired before, the contrast is stunning.
That more deliberate approach carries through much of the second act. Characters caught in the fallout of the murders, like Friar Lawrence (Rachel McCrain) and Juliet’s Nurse (Erin McCarson), get ample space and time to display the depths of their emotional reactions. The ensemble proves beyond a doubt that its powers of interpretation are so much more than madcap.
As the action draws to a close, Wedick grants her actors the power to reinterpret the very conclusion of the play. It’s a testament to the company’s creativity that I need to avoid further spoilers on a work that’s over 400 years old; the fourth-wall-breaking metacommentary is worth experiencing fresh.
Nemesis has accomplished a triumph with this production. If Shakespeare is folk music, this is a cover that forces you to hear the melodies anew.
Romeo and Juliet runs through Saturday, July 27, at the NC Stage Co. For details and tickets, visit NemesisTheatre.com.
(Photo by Eliza Alden Photography)
