Messages of Romeo and Juliet

¶ … Messages of Romeo and Juliet Withstand the Test of Time

The messages contained in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet have withstood the test of time as one of the few works of the Shakespearean period that can be adapted to modernity without losing its socially significant messages. Director Baz Luhrmann's (1996) tale of the doomed lovers takes place in Verona, a Californiaesque setting that only facilitates the contemporary delivery of Luhrmann's version of the play. The characters stay with the original Shakespearean dialogue, which means, for Luhrmann, that his directorial finesse is challenged by the fact that his audience who might be largely challenged by the language can nonetheless make sense of the unfolding storyline by the performance of the actors.

To that end, Luhrmann is very successful because he has enlisted a talented team of actors and actresses who close the racial and cultural divides and, therefore, and who recite their Shakespearean prose to rock, rapp and classical background music and foreground dance ensemble.

Just as in Shakespeare's version, the play opens with the contentious confrontation between the Montegue and Capulets, but in Luhrmann's play it is staged in the inner city at a combo gas station convenience store. The modes of transportation are not horses, but muscleman cars, and they carry not arrows and daggers but.21mm handguns. The confrontation between the two sides that touches a renewed round of tension between the two families is like watching a multicultural takedown in the hood. The camera angles are fast, succinct and each actor is well rehearsed and never misses a beat of this important scene.

The night of the costume feast when Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) arrives on the scene, it is in drag, dressed in a silver shining bra and miniskirt and dancing about with an endless energy. Again, sticking to a form (it was edited) of the true Shakespearean dialogue, the exchange between Mercutio and Romeo is intriguing, fun, and energizing. By the time Romeo arrives at the home of Juliet, he is understandably primed and pumped for love at first sight.