the review of Romeo and Juliet

The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

By William Shakespeare directed by Raphael Massie.

   The 2-hours drama performance displays the love between Romeo and Juliet which comes from a historical love story written by William Shakespeare.

   The story tells us about a tragedy between two youths. The main characters Romeo and Juliet were born in two families which thinks of each other as an enemy. They fall in love with each other in a banquet. Their sincere love could not show in front of all the people because of their families. As a result, they married with each other as a secret. Under the control of feudal ignorance. There are lots of people die during the feudal family fight. At last, Romeo was also exiled because of death of Julia’s cousin. Julia’s father arranges her marriage with the person who she doesn’t really love with. She has no choice but obey the priest---drinking the fake potion and waiting for Romeo. She went to the priest to find a way that she can escapes the situation and stay with Romeo forever. As a result, the priest gave her a fake potion which after serving as dead, but forty- two hours later will wake up. However, there is anything which is unlucky happening. Romeo has already known that Juliet was dead. As a result, he drank the real potion. Moreover, when Juliet wakes up, her Romeo lays down between her and has no breathe. She is so sad that breaking off her own life with a knife.

   The director for this performance whose name is Raphael Massie shows us the light and stage perfectly. Especially the light in the stage. It changes through the variety of characters’ emotion. What’s more, it also has different lights’ performance when the plots are different. The light turns dark when someone die. In addition, the lights become bright when the atmosphere was warm. The lights made us seems like we are part of the performance. We are all intoxicated in the story, the love between Romeo and Juliet. The part of customs is also attractive which lead to enjoy the show. Their customs can help me distinguish their role and everyone has the right position.

My favorite character in the drama is Romeo. it is no doubt that Romeo is a romantic person who imagine a lot in his world. His crazy love for Juliet is faith to him. It can be also described as the meaning of this world for him. His imagination leads him to be a romantic person. However, it also gets him in trouble. His imagination of love brings him into a big trouble through ignoring the reality. However, I respect his brave to against with his family. He owns all the advantages of passions, brave, the courage. The actor of Romeo named Steven Lee Johnson plays an important role in the performance. His voice, emotion, body language draws us a character who has all the personality of the real Romeo. He totally understands what happen to Romeo and all his metal activities. It is not only because sorts of his exaggeration of his body language but also his facial expression. Since I sat in front of the stages. I observed his facial expression when Romeo’s world collapses because of Juliet’s death. He totally shows us a feeling that his love dead.

In a word, after enjoying the whole performance, I begin to understand the director thoughts about love and hates. According to his interview, “their love transcends a history of hatred and violence that seems senseless by the end of the story. With violence, there is always a cost.” shows us his perspective about love and violence and also the reason why he wants to show that love is much more important than violence. I really like the performance because it combines literature and performance together which lets me understand the meaning of love and hate.