NYC production reinterprets Shakespeare

A darkened theater. The sound of stomping and rhythmic breathing. Four identically clad prep school boys. Repressed passion and homoeroticism. And Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Running on a current of sexual energy, the new R & J, in which four testosterone pumped prep school boys stage the classic love story, is a surprisingly smart and provocative study of released passion and its possible consequences.

R & J opens in a gray theater, where four boys in gray uniforms kneel behind gray boxes and, taking breaths in synchrony, violently chant Latin prayers, the Ten Commandments and the conjugation of amare – to love.

When the school day ends, the atmosphere changes immediately from oppression to frantic liberation, and the boys open a bound copy of Romeo and Juliet as if it was a combination of a sacred text and a trustworthy Playboy. Greedily lusting after anything remotely sexual and lingering on any words with questionable connotations, the boys' need to release their pent up passion becomes almost disarming.

With feverish intensity, Sean Dugan squirms his hips and drawls his words to transform the Queen Mab speech into a sexual fantasy. The others look on, vaguely uncomfortable, but obviously excited. It is at this point you realize that director Joe Calarco's R & J won't be any ninth grade Shakespeare lesson. Juliet towers over her Romeo; her mother presses her hands against her stomach in an upside down triangle; the friar leans in a bit too close to Romeo, holds him a little too low on the waist. Calarco takes such liberties with the text, and the Bard becomes far racier than you've ever considered him before.

The intelligent directing and nuanced acting save R & J from the fate of another recent sensationalistic update of the classic. Instead, its premise of a need to escape highlights the central theme of illicit passion that gets lost after seeing the trademark balcony scene one too many times.

The play's only prop, a large piece of crimson satin that literally slices the gray atmosphere embodies all sexual and violent passion. The scarf is flourished for every conflict and each kiss and ultimately shrouds Romeo and Juliet in their tomb.

The four actors (Dugan, Danny Gur-win, Greg Shamie, and Daniel Shore) superbly carry out the difficult task of a play within a play, performing the characters from Shakespeare as well as the hesitant and ravenous boys underneath. Moreover, they display both the boys' voracious appetite for passion and their feelings of transgression: that they are wrong first in submitting to passion and second in enjoying it.

While one boy reads greedily from the text, the others squirm in the corner. At the next moment the squirmers themselves straddle each other. This dialectic between desire and guilt ultimately escalates beyond an individual release of passion into a hesitant homoeroticism. The play presents this difficult subject remarkably well – not only through looks of unease and guilt, but also through moments reminiscent of an expressionist dance as the actors approach each other, pause and break away more reluctantly each time.

The intensity of this repressed desire moves the play feverishly and rapidly, culminating in the star crossed lovers' first kiss. Shamie and Shore adroitly capture both the excitement and trepidation of Romeo and Juliet as well as that of the school boys underneath. The double sense of illicitness pushes the play beyond a story of warring households or of homoeroticism to one that illustrates the joy and fear of all first loves.

Though performing Romeo and Juliet has become nearly a national pastime and balcony scenes are as cliche as the description "star-crossed lovers," the prop-less setting and genderless characters of R & J makes Romeo and Juliet seem like new. Shore's Juliet, in a white button down and gray slacks, taller than his Romeo, destroys the preconceptions of the fragile balcony mistress and allows her strength and resolve to come through. In contrast, the uncertainty of the usually dashing Romeo becomes apparent, as does the repression of the citizens of Verona. The play loses some of its momentum after the intermission when the boys put the text away and perform the play by heart, losing their consciousness of prep school repression.

The end of the tragedy is surprisingly uplifting – though Romeo and Juliet lie in a double suicide, the boys are summoned by the church bell into conformed marching. In a cross between Promethean defiance and wretched desperation, the boy who had played Romeo refuses to trade the copy of Romeo and Juliet for his uniform sweater. And though he falls back into line, the four rush close together in a final gesture of complicity as they accept what has passed between them and band together in their secret understanding of both Shakespeare and each other.

Far from being a cross-dressing farce or an immature adaptation, R & J treats the subjects of homoeroticism and repression seriously, paring them down to their essential elements. At the same time, the production is wickedly aware of its purpose, suggesting what one night of released passion can do to anything you thought you knew.

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'R and J' is performed Tues. through Sun. at the John Houseman Theatre (450 W. 42nd St.). Call Telecharge at 212/239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com.