Review: Fine acting propels 'Romeo and Juliet'

Teenage angst and parental control. Love at first sight and deep-seated enmity. Quintessence Theatre Group's superbly acted production of

Romeo and Juliet

magnifies the power of Shakespeare's plot while exemplifying everything that excites and aggravates about this company as it enters its sixth season.

First, the acting: Emiley Kiser's Juliet looks like a 13-year-old and acts like one. Her long hair is tousled into braids, and her every line bursts with the hyperbole of youth, adorably without being annoying. Connor Hammond pounds his chest as Romeo, a paramour and near-equal to Kiser in an excellent performance.

In multiple roles, Josh Carpenter and Alan Brincks astound with their versatility. As Tybalt, Carpenter lets his mouth gape after each line like an overgrown frat boy, then he reappears as fraternal Friar Laurence, his horseplay and easygoing manner illustrating why all the young people in town come to him with their frustrations.

Alexander Burns' direction elicits phenomenal performances from the entire cast, and his potent visual sensibilities shine through, creating a mesmerizing tableau vivant in the Capulets' crypt. If Burns didn't display such a thorough understanding of the text, I'd say he should focus his talents more on music video or TV production. Even though Quintessence's 21/2-hour show runs longer than what most 90-minutes- and-go-home theaters have me conditioned to expect, this is the best textual edit of this play I have seen (and the best rendering of the "Queen Mab" speech, by Brincks' Mercutio).

And yet, in Burns' insistence to include a techno-fueled rave scene, he gives one more example of his apparent desire to house all of Shakespeare in a discotheque.

Moreover, his direction often loses focus. For as much as he understands the text, he can't fully execute a directorial concept. The bank of TV screens displaying the time and place of each scene often yields a slick sense of overlapping and contrasting emotions and motives, but at other times lends the feel of a cheap telenovela.

As always, though, Quintessence keeps the classic feeling current. Mercutio and Tybalt draw pistols and then trade blows in an extended fistfight (Ian Rose's choreography worthy of a John McTiernan film), and Burns' tremendous cast manages to yield one vigorous, buoyant, or jarring scene after the next, even if they appear like pearls on a tangled string, connected by the text if not always the production.

Romeo

and Juliet

Presented by Quintessence Theatre Group through Nov. 7 at the Sedgwick Theater, 7137 Germantown Ave.

Tickets: $15-$34.

Information: 215-987-4450 or quintessence theatre.org.

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