The girl is twelve, although she looks sixteen, and she is a performer to her eyeballs. She sings; she dances and when she stabbed herself at the end of the play, a second grader was heard to whisper, "Is she really dead?"
I am sorry to say that Romeo was not her equal. He stood straight as a stick bug (about a half head shorter than she) and could not look her in the face when he rattled off his lines with machine gun speed. When they were supposed to kiss, he came at least twelve inches up to her face and turned quickly away, embarrassed to his sixth grade boy bones. For him, this was an exercise in humiliation.
Which is to say, it was all so entertaining. I couldn't stop smiling. The English teacher in me thought, ha, he will always know Romeo's lines. He can't escape Romeo for the rest of his life. He is burdened with Shakespeare.
And Murgatroyd will always be Juliet. She was born to be Juliet. She whispered to me after the performance, looking down at her blouse, "I think this is a pirate costume."
Carry on, actors!
No comments:
Post a Comment