Word: rauch
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Which is one reason, at least, why Bill Rauch's style so effectively transforms this Romeo and Juliet in to a massive but vitally exciting production, a weird semi-suburban epic that often lumbers but almost never drags. Rauch's main talent lies in evoking an intricate, extensive, wholly believable world from a few strategically placed details. He does it so surely and imaginatively that, in this instance, the viewer occasionally becomes a trifle dizzy at the overlapping vistas. More to the point. Rauch stumbles on his own inventiveness when a device or a setting draws too much attention...
...themes Rauch pursues most vigorously is the generation gap motif; he has said he can't shake the radical impression that if the young lovers had only appealed to their families for help, unexpected understanding might have Everett the disaster. And whether any invention of the sort comes from the script or not-presumably not-it comes through clearly when played. Both lovers appear awkward and withdrawn at home. becoming human and open only to each other...
...Evett as a surprisingly young and hip friar Lawrence, who appears to function essentially as Romeo's freshman proctor. (In one of the show's nicest and most economical touches. Romeo, visiting Lawrence's cell grabs a Coke from the fridge before settling down on the bed to confess.) Rauch occasionally requires this thoroughly alert crew to do something odd--kill one another with picnic cutlery, for instance, or mutely clutch miscellaneous blankets and bedding around their shoulders in mourning for Juliet's initial "death." But the cast tends to rise to even the most arbitrary occasion, and delivers without...
...similar tendency towards the personal trademark mars Rauch's enigmatic final scene, as one mute autumn leaf flutters slowly out of the overhead grill. But interestingly, a Mercutio and Benvolio, and their depiction as Romeo's childhood pals--avoids this tendency altogether. The women succeed, despite occasional awkwardness, precisely because their gender attracts no notice and the audience soon responds in kind...
...surprisingly the play survives these intrusions. As the company gains momentum and finishes adapting to the language. Rauch's elaborate conception loses its oddity and begins to work like another part of the technologically miraculous set, whose pieces and extensions metamorphose into beds, bathtubs or starry summer nights without detracting from the matter at hand. Likewise as long as Rauch uses his endless vision as a tool and keeps it out of the foot lights, he can work miracles on stage...