The Penn Stater Magazine

Romeo & Juliet On Our Lawn

October 17, 2009 at 9:06 am Tina Hay 2 comments

Unlike our senior editor Lori Shontz ’91, I am not a Shakespeare geek. In fact, I think I probably had never in my life seen a Shakespearean play performed until this week. But when the School of Theatre brought a production of Romeo & Juliet to the lawn right outside our offices in the Hintz Family Alumni Center, I definitely wanted to check it out.

So I went to opening night on Tuesday—and I went back to see the second performance the next night. I might well have considered going to the closing performance Thursday, except that we got the now-famous Earliest Snowstorm in State College History and the finale was canceled.

Undergraduate students Gilbert L. Bailey II and Leah Mueller played the lead roles in the production.

Romeo & Juliet was, in a word, terrific. The cast—made up entirely of undergrad and grad students—was first-rate, and the costuming and set design were pretty cool too. This was the School of Theatre’s first-ever outdoor production at University Park, and you can see from the photos that this was no small-scale effort—they went all out. We’ve been watching for the past couple of weeks as the crew re-landscaped the area directly below our magazine offices, constructed a stage, installed bushes and trellises, rigged up lights and sound, and stashed costumes and props in various rooms on our first floor.

I’m serious when I say I had never seen Romeo & Juliet. Going into the first performance, here’s everything I knew about the play: Boy and girl come from feuding families, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl can’t be together because their families don’t get along, boy and girl kill themselves over it.

At the masquerade ball hosted by Lord and Lady Capulet, Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love.

So, on the first night, I had a little trouble figuring out who was who and exactly what was taking place at any given moment. (This is not the fault of the cast or crew—instead you can blame whoever at my high school said I could take a double-math track and skip literature.)

But I certainly got the gist of the story, and I was blown away by the authenticity and passion of the performances. I was even more impressed when I read the program later and learned that the leads were played by undergrads: Romeo was played by Gilbert L. Bailey II, a senior in the musical theatre program, and the role of Juliet was played by Leah Muller, a sophomore music education major. (A sophomore. And not even a theatre major!)

Tybalt (MFA acting student Nathan James) challenges Romeo to a duel.

Another one who stood out for me was Derek Biddle, a senior musical theatre major, who played the role of Lord Capulet—Juliet’s father—with great intensity.

When he tells his daughter he has arranged for her to marry Count Paris, and she resists—since, after all, she has already secretly married Romeo—Lord Capulet’s fury at her lack of respect is so authentic. He bellows at her, he slaps her, she cowers. It’s enough to give you shivers.

And, of course, I loved the famous “balcony scene,” which was adapted in this case to show Juliet in an alumni center window (Lori Shontz’s office window, actually), talking romantically with Romeo as he clung to the trellis next to the window.

Juliet discovers that Romeo has taken his own life.

It was fun to see the production two nights in a row—I got even more out of it the second time. Now I can tell you all about the street brawl, the masquerade ball at the Capulet home, the duel in which Benvolio is killed, the duel after that in which Tybalt is killed, all that stuff. But you probably knew all that anyway. Unlike me, you probably studied Shakespeare at one time or another.

Despite temperatures in the 40s, the show attracted an audience of about 1,400 over the two nights of its run; the alumni center lawn was just packed with people sitting in folding chairs and on blankets. And, if you missed it, you can watch it on the Web—thanks to a partnership with the World Campus and the College of Information Sciences and Technology.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Campus events, College of Arts and Architecture, College of Information Sciences and Technology, Hintz Family Alumni Center, University Park campus, World Campus. Tags: Derek Biddle, Gilbert L. Bailey II, Leah Muller, Lori Shontz, Romeo & Juliet, School of Theatre, University Resident Theatre Company, William Shakespeare.