Not Wanting to Live Without Their Love
Review of Romeo y Julieta presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company
Written by Luis Laureano-Romero during an Arts Criticism workshop at Glacier Middle School
Have you ever seen a movie or play and thought, “These are good actors,” and think that you feel like they are not acting, like if he was really experiencing those things. That is one thing you would feel if you watched the Romeo y Julieta play. Romeo y Julieta is about two people who fall in love with each other, but whose families have always hated each other, so they do not approve of their love. They end up killing themselves thinking they could never be with each other, and not wanting to live without their love.
In my opinion, what helped me understand this play way better was their good acting and background and costumes. Let's talk about the background for example. Since one male actor and one female actor had to pretend to be their opposite gender, wearing the girl and boy costumes made it a lot more realistic and understandable. Also when an important character like Romeo or Juliet wore fancy dresses and clothes, it helped you understand how important they are in the play. For example when Juliet came in the play, she wore really elegant dresses.
Another way they made it easy to understand was the background and how they expressed their emotion in their words. For example, when the king came in, behind him was an image of a castle, so I immediately knew he was important. Also when a male acted like a female, they would change the tone and the pitch of their voice so we could understand that they were female or male. So that made it much more understandable for me and some audience members.
So, in conclusion, I recommend you to see this play in any theater, either a professional theater or a less professional one. In any type of theater, you would enjoy this play about Romeo and Juliet.
Lead photo credit: Romeo y Julieta by Seattle Shakespeare Company. Photo by Christian Zumbado.
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This review was written as part of an Arts Criticism workshop at Glacier Middle School in Mrs. Fishman’s Language Arts classes, taught by Press Corps teaching artist Jordi Montes.
