ROMEO AND JULIET
August 5, 2019
Article:
The Old Globe – Production
***** This is a Must-See Event *****
August 11 – September 15, 2019
(Opening night: Saturday, August 17)
Lowell Davies Festival Theatre
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Barry Edelstein
Photos by Photographer Jim Cox
As The Old Globe’s 2019 Summer Shakespeare Festival continues, the theatre announced the cast and creative team of the love-filled tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The Globe’s Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein returns to direct the greatest love story of all time, after helming a smash-hit production of Othello and a sales-record-breaking production of Hamlet. Performances will run August 11 – September 15 outdoors under the stars in the Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. Tickets start at $30.00 and are on sale to the general public now. Previews run August 11–16, with opening night on Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 8:00 p.m.
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
Verona’s Montague and Capulet families have been feuding for ages, and whenever they meet, violence breaks out. But when Romeo glimpses Juliet across a crowded dance floor, something different happens. Can star-crossed love survive in a world of rivalry and rage? With a plot featuring a masqued ball, sleeping potions, and all-out brawling in the street, wrapped in a text full of soaring poetry, it’s no wonder Romeo and Juliet has inspired countless adaptations, from ballets to movies to musicals like West Side Story.
Young love has never been as dangerous or delightful as it is in Shakespeare’s romantic masterpiece, brought to vivid life on our outdoor stage under the stars. Edelstein, one of America’s leading Shakespeareans, recently created a unique version of The Tempest, combining Shakespeare, dance, and classical music, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and oversaw the Globe’s inaugural Classical Directing Fellowship program.
“What a gift it is to direct one of the great masterpieces in world literature, and what an extra joy to do so on our Festival Theatre stage, one of the most beautiful Shakespeare venues in this country,” said Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. “Romeo and Juliet contains multitudes. It’s a work of sublime and uplifting romance, and also a warning about how hatreds held fast by one generation can cause terrible destruction to the next. It is a justly famous play that truly has in it everything we love about Shakespeare. As always, the Globe has attracted an extraordinarily talented cast and design team, and I am so looking forward to sharing their work with San Diego audiences.”
The cast includes lauded actors from Broadway, Off Broadway, film, and television, including Aaron Clifton Moten as Romeo (The Flick, “neXT,” “Disjointed,” The Night Of, “Mozart in the Jungle”) and Louisa Jacobson as Juliet (Native Son, The Member of the Wedding); Candy Buckley as Nurse (Globe’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; Broadway’s Cabaret, Thoroughly Modern Millie, After the Fall, Ring Round the Moon, Scandalous), Ben Chase as Mercutio (Mondo Tragic, Untamed, Anna Christie, Liberté: A Call to Spy, “Transparent”), Sofia Jean Gomez as Lady Capulet (Craig Noel Award for A Doll’s House, Part 2 at San Diego Rep, Lucille Lortel Award for Angels in America, Parts I and II), Jesse J. Perez as Friar Laurence (Party People, The Father, A Doll’s House, Informed Consent), and Cornell Womack as Lord Capulet (Globe’s As You Like It, Hamlet, The Winter’s Tale; The Tempest with LA Philharmonic; Broadway’s On Golden Pond, Talk Radio). The cast includes students in The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program: Carlos Angel-Barajas as Prince, Summer Broyhill as Lady Montague, Ramon Burris as Balthasar, Mason Conrad as Paris, Yadira Correa as Tybalt, Aubrey Deeker Hernandezas Lord Montague, Eric Hagen as Apothecary, Bibi Mama as Abram, Hallie Peterson as Capulet Servant, Jersten Seraile as Friar John, Morgan Taylor as Benvolio, Wenona Truong as Peter, Jared Van Heel as Sampson, and Marco Antonio Vega as Gregory.
The multiple-award-winning creative team includes Takeshi Kata (Scenic Design; Globe’sThe Imaginary Invalid, Welcome to Arroyo’s; Man from Nebraska, The Profane), Judith Dolan (Costume Design; Tony Award for Candide, Lucille Lortel Award for The Petrified Prince, Parade, Lovemusik; Night and Dreams, The Tempest with LA Philharmonic), Stephen Strawbridge (Lighting Design; Globe’s As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, King Richard II, Double Indemnity, Othello, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, international productions), Sten Severson (Sound Design; Globe’s As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, King Richard II, Love’s Labor’s Lost, more; Broadway’s Hair, The Motherf***er with the Hat, The Merchant of Venice), Mark Bennett (Original Music and Music Director; Globe’s Twelfth Night, Golda’s Balcony, Arms and the Man, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Pygmalion; Broadway’s Junk, Driving Miss Daisy, Drama Desk Award for The Coast of Utopia), Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum (Fight Director), Justin Gray(Pianist and Conductor), David Huber (Voice and Text Coach), Alaine Alldaffer, CSA(Casting), and Joshua Pilote (Production Stage Manager).
William Shakespeare (Playwright), 1564–1616, was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s preeminent dramatist. During his career he wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and other verses. His body of plays consists of the tragedies Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida; the comedies All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Two Noble Kinsmen; the romances Cymbeline, Pericles, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale; and the histories Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V, Henry VI Parts I, II, and III, Henry VIII, King John, Richard II, and Richard III. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Barry Edelstein (Director, Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director) is a stage director, producer, author, and educator. He has directed nearly half of the Bard’s plays. His Globe directing credits include The Winter’s Tale, Othello, The Twenty-seventh Man, the world premiere of Rain, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Hamlet, the world premiere of The Wanderers, and the American premiere of Life After. He also directed All’s Well That Ends Well as the inaugural production of the Globe for All community tour. In January he oversaw the Globe’s inaugural Classical Directing Fellowship program, and last November he directed The Tempest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. As Director of the Shakespeare Initiative at The Public Theater (2008– 2012), Edelstein oversaw all of the company’s Shakespearean productions as well as its educational, community outreach, and artist-training programs. At The Public, he staged the world premiere of The Twenty-seventh Man,Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and Steve Martin’s WASP and Other Plays. He was also Associate Producer of The Public’s Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino. From 1998 to 2003 he was Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company. His book Thinking Shakespeare, which was re-released in a second edition in June, is the standard text on American Shakespearean acting. He is also the author of Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions. He is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
