Romeo and Juliet Revisited : Tale of romantic love may have much to say to multiethnic city sorely in need of social love

Young love, for all its wonder, is a common experience: We have all felt it, if only for an hour, and we have all been tongue-tied by its power. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare uses the common memory of love to bind us to his young protagonists and then, by untying his own golden tongue as in scarcely any other of his plays, he gives us words we didn’t have--no one does, no one could--at the time.

The “tragic flaw” in “Romeo and Juliet” is to be sought not in the ardor of Romeo or Juliet but in the embattled dignity of the Capulets and the Montagues of Verona--an ancient, hardened prejudice that in the end devours their own children. The flaw is a collective flaw, and “Romeo and Juliet” is, to that extent, a very modern play, a sociodrama.

Tonight and for six more nights, this week and next, a production of “Romeo and Juliet” at Pasadena High School does by casting what “West Side Story” did a generation ago by rewrite. Romeo is presented by Brandon Toh, 17, a Chinese-American attending Polytechnic School. Juliet is Breata Simpson, 18, an African-American attending Pasadena High. The rest of the cast is drawn in part from other high schools and in part from working professionals. If the play works its magic as it so reliably has for 400 years, the audience will fall in love with the beautiful young couple. If it conveys its deeper message as well, the audience will find its mind carried outward to the streets of Los Angeles and to our own Capulets and Montagues.

Can we love one another in this star-crossed city? The prior question, perhaps, is: Can we imagine one another? The challenge of life in a multiethnic city is an affair not just of the wallet but also of the heart. Eric Waterhouse’s Theaterquest, a youth theater company organized in response to cutbacks in public funding for the arts, has made a leap of the imagination at just the right moment.