“In one of the best productions of “Romeo and Juliet” I’ve seen, director Scott Wentworth shifts focus from the play’s young lovers to the world making their love impossible – placing greater emphasis on the macho culture in which women are reduced to property.”

“I do not remember having seen a Juliet (and there have been dozens) behaving so much like a young teenager, ungainly, angry, headstrong. In the balcony scene after meeting at the ball, they moon, they throw themselves around, she screams at the voices calling her into the house.

This is not a Juliet, as we often see, who matures overnight into a young woman heroically taking her tragic fate in her hands; this is a girl, out of joint, who just forges ahead and goes down struggling. For me, it’s the best thing about this version. Among the other actors, Seana McKenna (Nurse) and Wayne Best (Friar) stood out, and I liked Evan Buliung’s teddy bearish Mercutio.”

“By the time we get to the balcony scene, we know just how well the Stratford Festival’s new production of Romeo And Juliet is working.
From the beginning, we’ve sensed that it is firmly on the side of youth — which is exactly as things should be in Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed young lovers.

…It’s something that happens infrequently in performances of this play but here we seem to be in the company of genuine teen-agers in all their vulnerability, Scott Wentworth’s exciting production at the Festival Theatre is geared to evoke the magical bliss of young love but it’s also prepared to send an icicle through its heart. Wentworth doesn’t compromise when it comes to the earthbound reality of the bitter rivalry between the Capulets and the Montagues or the dire consequences of a romance between Romeo and Juliet, two youngsters doomed by the dangerous chasm dividing their respective families.”

“Seana McKenna is a wonderfully complete Nurse, unforcedly squeezing all the comic juice out of her absent-mindedness, willed and otherwise. Yet, she’s sobering in a chilling instant when disaster looms.

Evan Buliung is an electric Mercutio, a compulsive jokester with a self-destructive edge.’

“Wentworth uses the wooden thrust and pointy balcony designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch as it was meant to be used – fluidly, cinematically, scenes almost overlapping as cut quickly from one to the next. A vivid pace makes sure we never get too far ahead of this overly familiar tale.

At the same time, while this Romeo and Juliet may be costumed in a customary way, the cobwebs have been dusted off of the text, making you feel as if you’re hearing it for the first time.

“Unconvinced that Shakespeare was a sentimentalist and this particular work was simply another romance, director Scott Wentworth fittingly shapes his production [Romeo and Juliet] as the tragedy that it is, focusing on the needless conflicts of the day, the resultant outbursts of familial violence in the streets of Verona and ultimately the suicides that claim the lives of – not just the star-crossed young lovers – but of others caught in the crossfire.

With this approach Wentworth, a skilled craftsman both on and behind the stage, draws from his gifted cast some of the finest and most clearly defined performances in recent memory.”

“Amongst a solid ensemble, the star turn here is Farb’s — she has that rare capacity to speak Shakespeare’s words as if they are occurring to her for the first time, as epitomized in her spellbinding delivery of Juliet’s speech just before she drinks the poison. McKeana’s Nurse is also pure joy, working her way effortlessly through lines laden with complex entendre, nipping on a flask, and wheedling coin after coin from Yared’s Romeo.”

“As the Star-Crossed lovers, Antoine Yared and Sara Farb interpret these iconic roles with a freshness and aptitude that allows them to reflect the nuanced complexities of the mind of an adolescent in what feels to be a truly authentic way.

The undeniable comfort and chemistry between the two makes them incredibly likeable as a couple.”