Director Sam Gold’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’ Is Technically Shakespeare, but the Bard’s Words Are Often Overshadowed in This Garish Production
While I have no problem with alterations such as suggesting Benvolio secretly pines for Romeo, I don’t find it especially daring in 2024. I found myself asking, as I did often while watching this production, what does this add to the story?
The director Sam Gold is known for shaking things up in his productions of canonical plays, particularly when it comes to Shakespeare. His “King Lear” of several years back starred a woman (the late, great Glenda Jackson) in the title role; for “Macbeth,” he preceded the action with a short lecture providing historical background, delivered by an actor in a wheelchair.
Truly, though, nothing prepared me for Mr. Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet,” which opened on Broadway this week. Another auteur not known for subtlety, Baz Luhrmann, used the same title nearly three decades ago for his modernized screen adaptation of this seminal tale of star-crossed love; Mr. Gold seems determined to bring it kicking and screaming — literally, at points — into the 21st century.
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