Light through the fourth wall breaks

Boy, did Shakespeare nail this one. Early in “Romeo and Juliet,” Romeo’s father frets that the boy is being “so secret and so close, so far from sounding and discovery.” Doesn’t that describe just about every teenager you can think of -- shut behind a bedroom door, iPod buds shoved defiantly in his or her ears to block out the world?

This is the sort of thing that fairly leaps out of Shakespeare’s writing. Even after repeat encounters, there’s always some new detail to be noticed. The weekend provided ample opportunity to make such discoveries, as intriguing interpretations of “Romeo and Juliet” were introduced by Aquila Theatre Company, the Manhattan-based classical group that performs here regularly on tour, and by A Noise Within, the classical repertory company that makes its home in Glendale.

Aquila, presenting its “R&J;” one night only at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium, offered an ever-changing rendition of the play in which the performers, versed in every part, learn which roles they are to play just as the show begins. Friday night, the assignments, written on strips of paper and pulled at random by select audience members, resulted in teen lovers played by the company’s young heartthrob as Romeo and its sleek, silver-haired veteran gent as Juliet. A Noise Within’s production sticks to standard casting but transfers the Italy-set tale, first presented in about 1595, to the 1930s in that country, under the fascists.

A Noise Within’s production, distinguished by director Michael Murray’s textual insights and the cast’s emotionally raw performances, is more richly rewarding than Aquila’s, but both underscore timeless truths.

Both, for instance, home in on what it’s like to be a teenager, barely out of childhood and experiencing adult emotions for the first time. At that age, a person has no sense of perspective, so every emotion is the absolute most exhilarating or most depressing feeling that he or she has ever experienced. Teens, consequently, may act rashly. Faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles to their love, Romeo and Juliet’s first response, individually, is to pull a blade and contemplate death.

The 1930s concept at A Noise Within puts two men attached to the Capulet household -- Juliet’s family -- in fascist uniforms. Beyond that, director Murray doesn’t much explore the period. But then, the performances are so in-the-moment that they rise above any specific time, to exist vividly in the right-now.

The street fight that breaks out between Romeo’s boisterous friend Mercutio (J Todd Adams) and Lady Capulet’s hotheaded nephew, Tybalt (Kenneth R. Merckx Jr.), is executed with headlong, body-bruising tumbles and murderous slashes of cane and dagger.

When Romeo’s subsequent involvement results in banishment, the young man (Steve Coombs), faced with separation from Juliet, works himself into such tear-choked despair that the adults in the room, kindly Friar Lawrence (Mark Bramhall) and Juliet’s ungainly but motherly nurse (Deborah Strang), have to mix soothing caresses with some sharply worded tough love to rouse him from the floor. After an equally bereft Juliet (Joy Osmanski) swallows a potion believed to feign death, she spends a few awful moments alone, terrified and regretful, before the dose takes hold.

The Aquila version -- conceived by Robert Richmond and company artistic director Peter Meineck and adapted and staged by Richmond -- coaxes forth the ample, often-bawdy humor of the story’s first half.

On Friday, the audience favorite in this company of four men and two women was Louis Butelli, who essayed the chiefly comic roles: Juliet’s nurse, played in bonnet and skirt, with many references to his imaginary bosom, and Mercutio, portrayed as rubber-faced class clown and major-league roughhouse.

Consistent with the comic tone, a key moment in the balcony scene was played for laughs: When Romeo (Andrew Schwartz) popped out of the darkness, waving his doublet to get Juliet’s attention, he so frightened her (as played by Kenn Sabberton) that she ran, screaming, into the auditorium. A too-brief moment of deeper feeling emerged later, when Sabberton’s Juliet, learning of Romeo’s banishment, pulled at her hair and dissolved, inconsolably, into tears.

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daryl.miller@latimes.com

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‘Romeo and Juliet’

Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale

When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday, April 11-12, May 2-3, 11-12, 23-25; 7 p.m. May 20; 2 p.m. May 12, 20

Ends: May 25

Price: $34 and $38

Contact: (818) 240-0910, Ext. 1

Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes