If you are like me and you like your Shakespeare (and especially his Romeo and Juliet) when it’s a little bit shaken and stirred (or run completely through a blender) then you should be keeping tabs on the delightful theatre company Tea Time Creation Co., who brought a joyous and playful rendition of Romeo and Juliet: A Drink Along to the beautiful upstairs venue of Good Robot Brewing Company last week.
Katie Dorian, Ailsa Galbreath, James MacLean and Gina Thornhill play all the parts in this collectively created and conceived Romeo and Juliet, while at the same time drinking copious amounts of beer. Tessa Pekeles, stage manager extraordinaire, is in charge of a bell and when the bell tolls the actors must take a drink of their beverages. The audience is encouraged, but in no way required, to follow suit with their own drinks, whether they be alcoholic or not. Good Robot also serves food throughout the performance; I was there during brunch and the pancakes looked ah.may.zing. The concept ensures maximum amounts of silliness, the potential for hilarious mistakes and miscalculations, and an overall ambiance that takes Shakespeare off the pedestal he’s been on for over two centuries to offer him back to the people in a way that is easy to understand, fun to engage with, and is the complete opposite of pretension or elitism.
The actors mix Shakespeare’s words with their own in a way that feels relaxed and improvised. Often they will add colloquialisms that either heighten the more absurd aspects of the play, or that clarify an Elizabethan joke that doesn’t land quite as well on its own anymore. What is wonderful is that, amid the overall game concept, there are many beautifully nuanced performances here and insightful interpretations of this classic story and Shakespeare’s text. One such choice is for Thornhill and MacLean to portray Juliet and Romeo very clearly as young teenagers. Juliet is said to be only thirteen in the text and the way Thornhill characterizes her torture in waiting for her Nurse to return with news from her crush beautifully and hilariously captures the heightened angst young people often feel in these situations. Similarly, MacLean’s Romeo is so consumed with worst-case scenarios after he is banished by the Prince that he doesn’t have the attention span for Galbreath’s Friar Laurence’s logical problem-solving. In fact, it is the long-suffering Friar, trying to help out of a goodness in his heart, but at his wit’s end with the shenanigans that have been thrust upon him, who becomes the unsung tragic hero of this show. In the same way Katie Dorion’s sweet and blithely naive Paris, the suitor Juliet rejects, is no longer the villain of the piece, but a hapless victim of impulsive romanticism pushed to its hormone-laden extreme. Dorion also plays the Nurse like she is Fran Fine from The Nanny, which is just pure fun.
The actors move freely around the upstairs of The Good Robot, using both the interior and the exterior balcony (despite the cold), and they interact with the audience in a way that is free-spirited, but safe. There are some really creative directorial choices here as well, including the use of bananas a swords, and the way that the actors have their character names written on their shirts and each time they change characters, they either add or remove a shirt to reveal the name of the next character they will be playing. It is simple, but extremely effective. There is also great use of music and dancing, especially at the party where Romeo and Juliet first meet.
I tend to agree with Friar Laurence that Romeo and Juliet can be a “tedious tale,” but Tea Time Creation Company has breathed so much life into this production that they have found a way for it to be relevant, and for audiences to engage with the story in a new and inclusive way.
Romeo and Juliet has closed, but follow Tea Time Creation Company on Facebook and Instagram (@teatimecreationco) to keep in the loop about their next production!
