STAGE REVIEW : ‘ROMEO AND JULIET’ GETS PHYSICAL AT SKYLIGHT

Bad British Shakespeare is illustrated by the BBC’s “The Shakespeare Plays” series: all talk, no energy. Bad American Shakespeare is illustrated by “Romeo and Juliet” at the Skylight Theatre: all activity, no brains.

Staged by Milton Katselas, it is a return to the experimental jungle-gym productions of the hippie era, with everyone in grab-bag rehearsal clothes, to “emphasize the universality of Shakespeare’s text” and to cut down on costume repair.

Physicality is the rule. The actors turn somersaults, wrestle, run down the aisle, fence like mad, hop aboard rolling metal platforms, hang upside down from the rafters. It is the Milton Katselas Workout.

Sometimes it fits the play. It’s right that Romeo (Thomas Harrison) and his gang should swagger around the square and make kidding grabs at each other’s crotches and be ready to fight at a moment’s notice: Shakespeare wrote them that way. (The swordplay, arranged by John Robert Beardsley and David Boushey, is almost too vehement for a small stage.)

It’s right, too, to suggest that in Verona, public occasions have a way of getting out of hand; that the Capulets’ ball, for instance, may turn into a Gypsy rout by midnight. A nice point, but it’s lost when the ball is played as a rout from the beginning, as here.

Again, it’s appropriate to make Juliet not a milk-and-water virgin, but a healthy young woman looking forward to physical love. But to play her as an instant sex kitten, as Linda Purl does, denies the discrimination and modesty that Shakespeare clearly gives her. This Juliet (Laurie Walters alternates in the role) would go off with anybody.

All that stretching and rolling around in the moonlight also looks a little corny. Purl is a good enough actress to catch Juliet’s yearnings in her voice, but Katselas keeps insisting that she come up with body language. Who said that every line in Shakespeare had to be illustrated?

Again, Mercutio (Raye Birk) has to deliver the Queen Mab speech with the gang training flashlights on him as a sort of spotlight. The gimmick drowns out the words. Meanwhile, it’s not clear why a middle-aged Mercutio is still hanging around with a youth gang, something that a less hectic production could explore.

Some of the other gimmicks are simply ludicrous. Juliet is first discovered working out on the monkey bars. “Fog” is established by having two actors shake dusty rags from the rafters: They look like kids clapping erasers. Friar Lawrence (Jack Grapes) plucks posies in the audience and then gives them to the audience.

Though nominally bare-bones, the show’s physical design is actually quite cluttered. Robert Blackman’s and Grania Preston’s motley costuming is far more distracting than a coherent costume scheme (of any period) would have been. And it was silly to put Gothic arches on those rolling platforms, making them look like Anglican tea carts. (Michael Devine designed the set.)

Harrison is just one of the guys in the first act, but he and Purl share some affecting moments as Romeo and Juliet find the gravity of love. And Lois Foraker’s Nurse has a charming instant when she comes in to awaken Juliet for her wedding and decides, for once, not to be bawdy.

There are some solid, thinking actors in this “Romeo and Juliet,” but they’re done in by the hyperactivity of Katselas’ “concept.” The remedy for by-the-book Shakespeare needn’t be throwing the book out the window.

Plays Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m.; 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., 851-3771.