Romeo and Juliet at The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck

As I watched this April 2025 performance (directed by Peter Risafi), I confess I was somewhat surprised that I was tearing up at several points. I know, objectively, there is little profound in the play, and the whole premise of teenagers falling in love and then tragically dying because of a series of mishaps, should be more apt to make me roll my eyes than shed tears. (In contemporary parlance, it is the most meme-worthy of Shakespeare’s plays.) Or more accurately, it would if I were reading the play or just thinking about it in the abstract; experiencing a performance is different, especially with the right cast, and the performers in Rhinebeck deserve most of the credit for this play working as well as it did.

In reviewing various Shakespeare performances over the years, I have tried to address matters of interpretation as well as acting, but I think this is a play where not as much is left to interpretation as it is in other plays: each scene here looks familiar, it’s almost a set piece as it unfolds, and my reaction is determined and can vary based only on how well the actors “sell” their parts to the audience. Camille Parlman as Juliet and Randi Kiersnowski as Mercutio were the standouts in this cast, really embodying and emanating the frenetic energy of teenagers. Mercutio can be more consistent, since she (a woman in this production) is always trash-talking, conveying the careless abandon of youth that has no sense…