Silesian Shockspur

The Polish title is Romeo i Julia (Yulia), which seems typically Polonocentric, like "Prince Karol" (Prince Charles), "The Master and Małgorzata," etc. but in fact makes sense, since somehow the name Julia/Yulia is more womanly than the pretty, sugary miniature "Juliet," and after all Shakespeare's Juliet is more mature than most real-life teenage girls, even if many of them are far advanced beyond their male classmates, and more mature than most characters in the play, if not in all Shakespeare.

In Silesia, if you want to see classical repertory theater, you have to get up early-- most of the performances are at 10 AM to accommodate school outings. The production I saw, a year and a half ago, was definitely geared for the callow youths who made up most of the audience-- heavily cut, with techno music in the ball scene and the family enmity represented visually as a soccer-fan feud. Nice touch-- I would have liked for them to use specific local teams rather than nations (I think it was Italy and Germany), something of which I have in fact long dreamed, but I understand that doing so could carry prohibitive security risks. A more daring, surprising, and surprisingly refreshing update was having the "Balcony Scene" ("Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are thou Romeo?") staged rolling around on the floor ("in bed"), as pillow talk. This touch, and the casting choices, accentuated Juliet/Yulia's sophistication relative to Romeo and the rest, though another choice that seemed to me revolutionary, presenting Juliet's farewell to the nurse as a tantrum, with the nurse still onstage, rather than a soliloquy as in the text, counterbalanced that effect by revealing a previously hidden childishness just before the end. Inexplicably and unforgivably, the line where she notes that Romeo's lips are still warm was cut, as was the existential-hipster element in Mercutio (he was reduced to the "class clown"-- I was nonetheless pleased that he got the biggest applause at the end). And strange to say but I missed Prince Escalus at the end, with the line "All are punished."