Romeo Y Julieta

I am excited to review the Romeo Y Julieta bilingual take on Shakespeare's classic tale of two star crossed lovers from the perspective of a native spanish speaker. I've seen shows and movies where english and spanish are mixed and it can be hard to balance. In this performance I didn't find the spanish to be distracting. The translation was accurate to the english it was responding to.

What I did find distracting were the moments where the actors decided to translate the spanish to english. It was not consistent and would distract from the moment the actors were giving to the scene. It more commonly happened at the beginning of the production when each family was giving their introduction to the story. The english would be translated to spanish directly, which led me to believe there would be word for word translation during scenes, but I later found that when the english was translated to spanish would ultimately be random.

At the beginning of the play, it was noted that the story they were about to tell was set in no specific time in no specific location, which I believe gave the production the freedom to dress the characters the way they wished and broke down the question of the language barrier. This tactic freed my mind from those questions of how or where the story was set.

I believe that this reenactment of Romeo Y Julieta sent home the idea that love is universal and knows no bounds. The actors were able to stay in character and proved that language isn't a barrier when acting. I was a fan of the representation of the spanish language and believe that this production was able to breakdown barriers. I hope to see more cultural twists on classics that would help others feel included in the literature of old.