A Star-Crossed Staging

Charitably, you could approximate the “Romeo and Juliet” at the Ahmanson to what Lord Capulet calls that lovesick kid, Romeo: “virtuous and well-governed.” Sir Peter Hall’s production is stolid, dogged, 2 1/2-star Shakespeare. Even with a deeply variable cast, the end result carries a kind of bland serenity, all that lovely sonneteering gliding by without much in the way of theatrical excitement.

It is not overwhelming and it is not underwhelming. You leave the production feeling merely whelmed.

Hall’s brand of Shakespeare, at least as we’ve been getting it here in Los Angeles, is just what many traditionalists prefer in their classics. Two years ago, Hall fashioned a stiff “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and a far livelier, though equally, defiantly classicist “Measure for Measure.” His “Romeo and Juliet” lands somewhere roughly between those two.

The flamenco musical flourishes and sun-baked town square of scenic and costume designer John Gunter suggest a flexible 19th century Spanish or Portuguese locale. Like many productions, this one is more or less color-coded for instant racial division (black Romeo, white Juliet), though, wisely, Hall and company encompass a multiethnic ensemble.

A lot of the individual casting, less wise. DB Woodside’s Romeo is game but unvarying, two or three notes in the key of Sullen, his delivery low on even naturalistic-sounding musicality. The same goes for Jesse Borrego’s surprisingly predictable Mercutio, just another contempo-compendium of crotch-grabs and pumping motions. (Also, at times, disconcertingly, he sounds like the late Jim Varney.)

On another planet entirely, we have a highly credentialed British performer such as Miriam Margolyes. As the Nurse, she turns in . . . well, a turn--a chortling, eye-rolling, not unskilled turn. It’s like an audition for the entire Charles Dickens canon. Only in Margolyes’s discovery of Juliet’s seemingly dead body do we glimpse something deeper and truer, a palpable human shock.

The staging has such moments, here and there. Like Hall, Dakin Matthews, a reliably strong L.A.-based actor, director and dramaturge, is a proud classicist--and a vital one, here especially. He delivers the prologue, and later as Lord Capulet, he rips into Juliet with unexpected force. Matthews knows how to imbue such petty tyrants with both an amusing fussiness and a weird kind of ferocity. For about two minutes, this “Romeo and Juliet” becomes a tragedy about Lord Capulet--a walking, fuming reason for teen suicide--and when Matthews finishes his tirade (to applause, opening night), it’s as if he’s heading offstage to look for Lear’s heath.

In the balcony scene--you may have heard of it--Hall, guided in part by stage directions from the play’s First Quarto edition, manages a couple of neat details. There’s a moment of what-do-we-do-now? between Romeo and Lynn Collins’ sultry, raven-haired, moderately effective Juliet (apparently they had Ava Gardner films back then), which acts as a amusingly realistic antidote to all the devotional love poetry. At scene’s end, Romeo strains to touch his betrothed’s hand. He can’t reach it. A couple of hours hence, Romeo’s final “Thus with a kiss I die” is again undercut; he dies before the kiss, not with it. Truly he is Fortune’s Schmo.

Along the way, the audience is treated to some very pretty pictures, among them the golden-hued entrance of the masked ball attendees (Robert Wierzel’s lighting making the most of the setting). I enjoyed Michael Potts’ swift, straight-up Benvolio, and Sara Botsford’s forceful, pleasing Lady Capulet. Michael Gross is a solid enough Friar Lawrence, though no one--No one? No, no one!--could make much of the Friar’s Act V executive summary. This bit can’t help but remind a contemporary American audience of Simon Oakland’s explanation of events at the end of “Psycho.”

But I kid the Bard. He wrote a most excellent and lamentable tragedy, as well as a flexible one. Even the strident exuberance of the most recent film adaptation has its moments. Hall, predictably, was mixed on that one: “I liked Baz Luhrmann’s film of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ” the director said. “I just wish [the actors] hadn’t spoken, because they couldn’t.”

Tin-ear Shakespeare may be in the ear of the beholder. But even when its better actors do their thing, the Ahmanson “Romeo and Juliet” bespeaks not much of anything, in any interpretive direction, beyond the proper enunciation of “banish-ed.” It strives for clarity but ends up being a dutiful dum-de-DUM-de-DUM affair--rhythmically steady to a fault, dramatically even-toned, overridingly, overwhelmingly whelming.

* “Romeo and Juliet,” Ahmanson Theatre, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Also: Feb. 11, 18, 25, 7:30 p.m.; March 1, 8, 15, 2 p.m. Ends March 18. $25-$49. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes.

Dakin Matthews: Chorus, Capulet

Michael Potts: Benvolio

Mark Deakins: Tybalt, First Musician

Dominic Comperatore: Tybalt’s Page

Sara Botsford: Lady Capulet

James Avery: Montague

Sharon Omi: Lady Montague

J.D. Hall: Escalus

Michael Tisdale: Paris

Joseph Hodge: Paris’ Page, Third Musician

DB Woodside: Romeo

Lynn Collins: Juliet

Miriam Margolyes: Juliet’s Nurse

Jesse Borrego: Mercutio

Lorenzo Gonzalez: Mercutio’s Page

John Towey: Capulet’s Cousin

Michael Gross: Friar Laurence

Bernard K. Addison: Chief Watch

Lego Louis: Third Watch

Jimonn Cole: Fourth Watch

Jane Macfie, Nicole Marcks, Diana Tanaka: Citizens

Karl Fredrik Lundeberg: Strolling Musician

Jordan Lund, Matthew Yang King, Matthew Henerson, Lyle Kanouse: Capulet Servants

Eric Steinberg, Dohn Norwood: Montague Servants

Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Peter Hall. Scenic and costume design by John Gunter. Lighting by Robert Wierzel. Sound by Rob Milburn. Music by Karl Fredrik Lundeberg. Fight direction John Stead. Choreographer Joann F. Jansen. Production stage manager Mary Michele Miner.