A dream for ever and ever. To have "Romeo and Juliet" performed the way it was at the time of Elizabeth and the Globe Theatre, only with men and boys. But dream in the dream, let the boys be boys and not disguised boys, boys in drag, drag queens of sorts. What would happen if
?
Alan Brown has just done it. And he pushed his boyization of the play to the farthest point possible. Late teenagers in a military academy, or rather prep school, cadets who want to go to West Point all of them. Not only do the young men play all the roles but they play them with the necessary emotion and force. Romeo and Juliet who are two young men of 17 years of age really live their love as if they were in love, because they are in love, at least they are telling us with their tears, with their voices, with their bodies at all levels of nudity, though nothing frontal, that they are in love and that they spent the night before the lark sings nude in the same bed, spooning one against the other one in the other.
We are supposed to be moved by that love and by the hostility it reveals in some of these cadets, but there the film is discrete. No one dies, no one is really wounded, but the fights are real fights since cadets have some experience and training at close combat. And the atmosphere of the academy, though deserted since we only have a dozen cadets left, all the others being out on some field exercise, is reconstructed with small details here and there: the reveille, the flag going up and down, the roughness of an all male community, the showers and the washrooms, the two non-commissioned officers looking after the dozen abandoned cadets and making them march through an empty yard.
But that's not the real point. We just have to believe it is real and then the love story it tells is also real and Romeo and Juliet are really in love and they really make love on their last night.
The best part, and I am not going to tell you the final twist and the dreadful poison they use to close the show with some surreal event, is the end and Juliet rises from the dead and sings a song that is so true, so powerful, that comes from so far away, 1913, music by James V. Monaco and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, sung by Matt Doyle who had been such a moving Juliet and is now a charming resuscitated Juliet. That's a beautiful idea that counterbalances the Renaissance beauty of the Pilgrim Sonnet with some modernity. Emotion I guess is in that union of William Shakespeare and Joseph McCarthy in an inspiring trans-gender film, or should I say trans-genre?
You made me love you I didn't want to do it I didn't want to do it You made me want you And all the time you knew it I guess you always knew it You made me happy sometimes You made me glad But there were times, baby You made me feel so bad
You made me cry for I didn't want to tell you I didn't want to tell you I want some love That's true, yes I do Indeed I do, you know I do Give me, give me, give me what I cry for You know you've got the kind of kisses That I die for You know you made me love you
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Alan Brown has just done it. And he pushed his boyization of the play to the farthest point possible. Late teenagers in a military academy, or rather prep school, cadets who want to go to West Point all of them. Not only do the young men play all the roles but they play them with the necessary emotion and force. Romeo and Juliet who are two young men of 17 years of age really live their love as if they were in love, because they are in love, at least they are telling us with their tears, with their voices, with their bodies at all levels of nudity, though nothing frontal, that they are in love and that they spent the night before the lark sings nude in the same bed, spooning one against the other one in the other.
We are supposed to be moved by that love and by the hostility it reveals in some of these cadets, but there the film is discrete. No one dies, no one is really wounded, but the fights are real fights since cadets have some experience and training at close combat. And the atmosphere of the academy, though deserted since we only have a dozen cadets left, all the others being out on some field exercise, is reconstructed with small details here and there: the reveille, the flag going up and down, the roughness of an all male community, the showers and the washrooms, the two non-commissioned officers looking after the dozen abandoned cadets and making them march through an empty yard.
But that's not the real point. We just have to believe it is real and then the love story it tells is also real and Romeo and Juliet are really in love and they really make love on their last night.
The best part, and I am not going to tell you the final twist and the dreadful poison they use to close the show with some surreal event, is the end and Juliet rises from the dead and sings a song that is so true, so powerful, that comes from so far away, 1913, music by James V. Monaco and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, sung by Matt Doyle who had been such a moving Juliet and is now a charming resuscitated Juliet. That's a beautiful idea that counterbalances the Renaissance beauty of the Pilgrim Sonnet with some modernity. Emotion I guess is in that union of William Shakespeare and Joseph McCarthy in an inspiring trans-gender film, or should I say trans-genre?
You made me love you I didn't want to do it I didn't want to do it You made me want you And all the time you knew it I guess you always knew it You made me happy sometimes You made me glad But there were times, baby You made me feel so bad
You made me cry for I didn't want to tell you I didn't want to tell you I want some love That's true, yes I do Indeed I do, you know I do Give me, give me, give me what I cry for You know you've got the kind of kisses That I die for You know you made me love you
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU