I Watched Romeo and Juliet

Each play of William Shakespeare had a moral story of love and family; he created a world full of jealousy, hate, vengeance, and tragedy, but in those darkest moments, there was the power of love that could break those barriers. In my opinion, the plays were written by Shakespeare after so many centuries, they were still right and never ran out of time because those issues in his play can never go away and still exist nowadays. William Shakespeare was a truly talented playwright. Choosing a play by Shakespeare to write about is very difficult for me, but there is one play that has become legendary and is being adapted into so many versions, which are all successful. It is “Romeo and Juliet.

Source: IMDb

I chose “Romeo and Juliet” because I liked the value this play brings to life about love, drama, and loss. This play was written in 1597, and it was a tragedy/drama. But more tragedy. The play was about the love of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. But the Montagues had a big feud with the Capulets, and the two families always fought each other. Romeo met Juliet when he attended the masquerade of the Capulets even before he fell in love with a girl named Rosaline Lord Capulet wanted Juliet to marry Paris, but he must wait two years for Juliet because she was not 14. Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, was killed by Romeo because before, Tybalt killed Mercutio in a duel fight even though Romeo tried to stop. Romeo flees away, and that night, he meets Juliet, where she is on the balcony, and Romeo expresses his love to her. Juliet wanted to be with Romeo and asked Friar Lawrence for advice. He gives Juliet a potion that makes her dead for a while, and then Romeo and Juliet would reunite in Mantua after the Capulets find out she died. Romeo learned that Juliet had died; he bought the poison and died next to Juliet after he killed Paris. Juliet awoke, she realized Romeo had died, and she killed herself to be with him. After the death of their children, the Capulets and the Montague stopped the feud and became friends.

Last night, I watched this play with Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad, and this is the version I found the most impressive because it did not follow the traditional style. The setting is modern-day, with two families like powerful gangsters in the town. But I found that this version’s director still respected William Shakespeare. Even though it is a modern version, the dialogue, and the script still stick with the original, and they speak in the British accent, which I always love to hear. They use old words like “art,” “thy,” “thou’lt,” and “shalt.” It is so cool. But I don’t like the production design so much. It lacks color and lightning. The original setting was full of colors, and it could expose the love of Romeo and Juliet by the setting behind it. With this production, I don’t see so many settings like the balcony where Romeo says love to Juliet, the masquerade of the Capulet, or the street of Verona. The play would have been much better if the production had focused more on that. But the sound effect and the score somehow saved the play because the sounds fit with every act, every scene of the play. I love it. About the acting, the actors portrayed each character so real that it made me think they did not act at all, they really did it; they fought for real, they kissed for real, and they hated each other for real. That is a success.

Another thing that I found their actions effective to me in how they said. Shakespeare’s plays were challenging to act because of each word. Each dialogue was literature or poetry, and whoever played his plays must understand what Shakespeare was trying to say, what he wanted from his character, and how he wanted those characters to reflect life. It is Shakespeare’s style. Each actor handled the accent and dialogue well to express the characters’ true selves. Not the best like other versions but with me, I think they truly convinced me.

At first, I thought Orlando Bloom as Romeo Montague was the best in this play because he is a Hollywood movie star; he starred in so many box office hits, and that can guarantee his performance in this play. He can handle the role of Romeo easily and perfectly with his appearance and his British accent. But Condola Rashad is the most outstanding one in this play. She broke the border of skin color to become colored Juliet with beauty and brought Juliet to life. Juliet is a character with so many struggles in life; she never once could do anything she ever wanted; her life was being controlled by her parents, but not because of that; she lost her loyalty, dream, and confidence in love with Romeo. She was young but compassionate and blithe. Rashad performed Juliet with all the emotion levels, from happy to rebel, from sad to depressed. Sometimes she was overjoyed, but sometimes she cried for her life, her love; she spoke quickly to show her struggle with the situation. In the last scene, the scene I cried, where Juliet killed herself to be with Romeo, Rashad did a great job showing Juliet’s most painful feelings toward her lover. She cried, and the tear proved nothing more painful than losing the loved one. The most convincing part of her performance was her eyes. If you look carefully, her eyes were so sad and lonely because she could not have love for her life time after time, and when she got one, she lost it. Juliet speaks for every young people nowadays. The young and the restless.

One thing that stood out for me the most in this play is the feud between two families. It is like my life right now, where everyone in a big family hated each other and swore never to see each other again. That is why I love this play so much. After so many centuries, “Romeo and Juliet” is still correct and fits with life. “Romeo and Juliet” is about love and how parents affect their children’s lives. This play had the value of love and the lesson for every parent on how they live that affects their children’s lives. I can see that nothing can stop the love of people who love each other; even the two families rejected them, and because of the feud between them, they passively killed their children. I must say that Romeo and Juliet is a play that easy to makes everyone cry, including me, because these two characters can be any one of us in real life who is going through so many bad things.