Romeo, Juliet and Jeremy Hutton

Anya Broytman, a first-year undergraduate student at Trinity College, asked Jeremy Hutton, artistic director of Hart House Theatre, to share some insights into Romeo and Juliet. Hutton’s energetic interpretation of the timeless love story, which premiered Nov, 7 runs until Nov. 24. (Tickets available here.)

What can audiences expect from this production of Romeo and Juliet? Did you go classic or contemporary?

It's funny: the last time when I directed contemporized Shakespeare was at Trinity College in 1999 or 2000. It was the Merchant of Venice and since then I have never modernized any of the fifteen or sixteen Shakespearean plays that I've directed.

Why?

It's a very tough business and I certainly did not succeed at it when we did this at Trinity College. Some aspects of it were good, but there are some elements that are very difficult to work with, such as guns and telephones that come into play as soon as you modernize Shakespeare. These become a big issue: why doesn't the Friar just call up Romeo and let him know that Juliet is not actually dead? This is not to mention that the cultural and sexual politics have changed. In modern context, it is hard to understand why Juliet would not just leave her household. That being said, I am setting the play in a modern context.

How so?

Fully understanding the challenges that are inherent in that, I want to do it because staging the play classically often causes people to separate themselves very far from the action: they see it as something that used to happen but would never happen now. This is why setting Shakespeare in a modern context is appealing, but you have to deal with all the issues that come up carefully. You still want to tell the story that Shakespeare wrote rather than change it to fit your own vision. This happens a lot in modern adaptations of Shakespeare: people just alter the story to suit their needs. It's not really your job as a director; your job is to illuminate the story for the audience. So I had, for instance, to deal with guns while still finding a way to keep swords in the play.

I set it in contemporary Italy and I made it really violent, steeped in insular family politics. I guess there is still a stereotype attached to Italian vendetta as well as the perception of their families being very controlling, very passionate about kinship. This helps explain the sexual politics: Juliet does not simply run away because she has this overbearing sense of obligation. Tybalt is driven by his outrage at how Romeo has "shamed" his family by showing up at their party. He feels that his family has been insulted and family insults cannot be tolerated. So, even in a modern context, contemporary stereotypes can help illuminate the story so that it makes perfect sense.

As for the issue of cell phones, we have made sure that in our modern Italy – which is a bit fictionalized – no cell phone ever arrives on the stage. It is non-existent in this particular world. Besides, this place has a dirty, violent, hip-hop feel to it; people walk around in half-militarized gear with machetes hanging from their hips. So, in our Verona, they just don't have this technology. It is a small, insular location that has fallen into chaos – something resembling not modern-day Italy, but perhaps parts of Africa.

Music associated with Romeo and Juliet ranges from iconic songs such as "What Is a Youth?" in Zefferelli's movie version to Sergei Prokofiev's score for the ballet. What role does music play in your production?

I come from a music background – I studied music at U of T – so it's a big part of all the shows that I do. It's funny that Romeo and Juliet has a musical tradition because it's one of the few Shakespearean plays that doesn't have any songs written into it, unlike Twelfth Night or As You Like It. But everyone feels that it must have music, perhaps because of the party scene where we assume there is music and dancing. Once you put music into the show in one place, you have to put it in other places.

For this production, I have been digging around in modern Italian music and came across a pretty rich tradition of Italian hip hop. I was surprised at the major role that hard-style electronic hip hop plays in their modern music. Also, their hip hop is political and controversial in its social commentary. This is very interesting because Romeo and Juliet is set in political chaos; the prince cannot control Verona. If you think of him as a corrupt politician, this music works out pretty well as long as you are very sensitive to the moments where hip hop is not appropriate in terms of the storytelling.

So, when Mercutio comes on and they go to the party, there is dubstep and hip hop but as soon as Romeo and Juliet meet, something has to happen. Not only in terms of the action and movement, but also in terms of the music – you can't just keep hammering out a hip-hop tune in the background. So, I took some modern classical piano music by an Italian composer named Ludovico Einaudi and I DJ'ed it all together so that when Romeo and Juliet meet, we slip from sharp hip hop into beautiful, sustained classical music. 

What can we expect visually?

As I mentioned, there will be modern Italian costumes. Most young people will be wearing a sort of cobbled together semi-military gear (think child soldiers: a jacket, some straps, and a belt for a knife combined with a regular T-shirt and jeans). So, there will be a combination of self-arming, militaristic attire and just casual young people's clothes.

The older people – the prince, Capulet and Montague – will be wearing suits. The set itself is a big monster. Structurally, it has elements of old Roman architecture, but it is made of very modernist materials. The music will create a certain atmosphere, and, since the play is modernized, be prepared: guns will come out from time to time.

What else is there to say about the design?

It is dirty and violent – especially violent – because this is, above all, a story about two young people who find love and try to make it work in a chaotic society and it simply cannot work. Not because of fate, but because of circumstances.

But fate is important to this story.

Yes, but if you play it fatalistically, then nobody has any stakes, right? At the end of the play everybody on stage – every single person except for the watchmen – is personally responsible for the bloodshed in front of them, for the deaths of Paris, Romeo and Juliet, and of Tybalt and Mercutio as well. There is not a single person on stage who is not guilty. Capulet, Lady Capulet, Montague, the Prince himself – for not doing anything about the strife, Balthasar – for leaving Romeo alone in the tomb, the Friar – for setting it all up and leaving before Juliet awakened. Everyone on stage is super-guilty of what has happened. Any one of them could have made a choice throughout the play that would have changed the ending.

Therefore, it cannot be just fate – if fate could be used as an excuse, there would be no drama, no pathos. It is critical that when the curtain goes down, all characters on stage have had a hand in what has happened and realize that the tragic outcome is, to an extent, of their making. This is more dramatically exciting. You can never tell an actor to play fate. If there are no active choices, there is no theater.

Inset photo (left to right): Paolo Santalucia and Darwin Lyons (photo by Daniel DiMarco)