Go! review

“Romeo & Juliet” has been adapted, revised, re-visioned, tweaked and fine-tuned in countless forms and guises since William Shakespeare first presented it near the end of the 16th century.

However, the current Cincinnati Shakespeare Company presentation plays it fairly straight and very successfully. The costume and set design hearken back to the Elizabethan era, and only the creative use of lighting and sound would put date this as a 21st century production.

The casting and some of the acting are questionable. Chris Guthrie is a decade too old to be a totally credible Romeo, but Hayley Clark lets us believe that she’s a 14-year-old maiden eager for love.

And while Sherman Fracher, always a joy to watch, uglies up nicely and nearly steals every scene she’s in as the Nurse, and Jeremy Dubin offers up an energetic Mercutio, other guests artists don’t quite live up to the power of the script. In this play especially, Shakespeare earned his reputation for creating memorable secondary characters, but here it’s a little hard to keep track of who is who. Perhaps it’s all the doublets and cod-pieces that look alike between the houses of Montague and Capulet, but it’s wise to keep a program handy.

In spite of a few missed opportunities, director Richard St. Peter, artistic director of the Actors Guild of Lexington in Kentucky, shows how powerful the story is without setting it in a space ship or in some urban setting. Good old fashioned Verona is good enough.

how to go
WHAT: “Romeo & Juliet”
WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Oct. 7
COST: $26 adults; $22 seniors; $20 students; $12 previews
MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com