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Romeo art in St. Petersburg
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
ST. PETERSBURG -- Romeo and Juliet will be the 2003 Shakespeare in the Park production by American Stage. It will be directed by Andy Goldberg, who also staged this year's The Bomb-itty of Errors, a hip-hop treatment of The Comedy of Errors. Goldberg is not planning to turn Romeo and Juliet into a musical, as has been the practice with American Stage park shows for more than a decade. "There will be a lot of music, but nobody's going to sing," said Lee Manwaring Lowry, managing director of the theater. "It won't be a musical, but Andy is talking about commissioning an original soundtrack-type score." American Stage has never performed Romeo and Juliet, according to Lowry, who said Goldberg's aim is to "scrape away the sentimentality" of Shakespeare's tragic romance. "He'll do some editing and cutting, but at this point, he doesn't intend to set it in any particular place." Goldberg has directed several Shakespearean productions, including Twelfth Night for New York's La Mama theater. He was associate artistic director for the New Group theater company in New York from 1997 until this year. His staging of Bomb-itty was a hit on the St. Petersburg waterfront, and it went on to have successful runs this summer at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and in Scotland at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it received the highest award for ensemble performance. Romeo and Juliet, opening April 11 and continuing through May 11, will be the 18th annual Shakespeare in the Park production.
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From the wire |
