Word: juliets
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That would be a mistake in any play of Shakespeare's, but Romeo and Juliet suffers cruelly. Shakespeare frolics in the verbal exuberance of his youth in each of the play's celebrated passages. Like Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech, Romeo and Juliet studies insubstantiality, considering love as the product of words, not acts. After all, there isn't much in the plot to convince an audience of the worth of the love between Romeo and Juliet: a kiss at a masked ball, a nighttime encounter, a secret marriage, and one night together are its only substance...
...extraordinary, as when it switches from the prevalent formal diction to simple, direct monosyllables in the Act II meeting between the two lovers--so straightforward that its language has become a model for greeting cards and sentimental wallposters. Shakespeare never lets us doubt that the love of Romeo and Juliet is the offspring not of their hearts but of their dreams, their words...
...blame for the failure of this Romeo and Juliet must lie at the feet of Hughes and Shannon Gaughan as Juliet. Neither goes beyond the broad label of 'youth' to find some more specific trait in their characters to highlight; neither is terribly graceful on stage; and both annoyingly exploit some vocal and some non-verbal mannerisms...
...thread of Shakespearian poetry and never picks it up again. His voice maintains the same pace and tone throughout the show, except at moments of special excitement when he raises it up high in his throat in a doomed attempt to communicate wonderment. When he is banished for killing Juliet's cousin in a duel and flees to his confessor's cell, he collapses on the floor and cries; the irritating sobs continue interminably. They seem an admission of the actor's inability to cope with Shakespeare's writing...
Gaughan is little better, though she has moments of more composure on stage. She seems to be trying to act out a genuinely 13-year-old Juliet, but like Hughes she lacks essential vocal control. She tries to press her small voice to impassioned heights, and the result is an embarrassing sound somewhere between a whine and a scream. And at heated moments, she has a habit of trying to spout an entire line of pentameter verse in one breath...