Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 16, 1995 TAG: 9502170004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It's 5:10 Saturday afternoon, the tail end of a long day of rehearsing "Romeo and Juliet" at Mill Mountain Theatre, and the company's 24-year-old Australian Romeo is recalling his own days of teen romance.
Christopher Mark Johnson glances down at the stage, where Juliet's father, in street clothes, angrily asks, "Where have you been gadding?"
Johnson, a Sydney native with dual Australian-American citizenship, looks up with a rueful grin.
"Hey, I've been there. I remember when I was 18, calling up my girl really late one night when I'd had a bit to drink, and I got her father. I asked to speak to her, and he said, `Certainly not!', and I yelled something about `Haven't you ever heard of true love?' I guess I'm a little embarrassed about it now."
Down on the set, director Jere Hodgin raises his voice above a stagehand's hammering: "OK, that's good, that works. Let's get ready for the party scene - everybody for the party scene."
Somebody with a clipboard whispers something and he changes his mind: "No, it's the lamentation scene, not the party scene - I forgot, I'm sorry." The set is controlled chaos, an anthill somebody jabbed with a stick. Juliet climbs up to her bed and prepares to be dead, her mother and father practicing lines as she arranges herself on the pillows.
"I really love this role," says Johnson. ``It's so relevant to today, this one in particular. Romeo travels with a posse of his buddies, a group of teen-age boys, a typical guy thing. But as soon as he falls in love, he's off doing his own thing.
"Reminds me of a joke that Seinfeld tells about how two men can have all kinds of elaborate plans - but when a woman enters the scene, all bets are off, and this is understood with the guys," says Johnson.
Like the song says, ``Just like Romeo and Juliet."
Johnson, who starred in the feature film "Kilian's Chronicle," to be released later this year, says there's one big similarity between stage and film. "In both cases, you leave real life behind. Downtown Roanoke just doesn't exist for me at the moment, except for maybe the First Street Bar and Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea."
Mill Mountain Theatre's production of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" opens Friday night and runs through March 12. Six matinees for area school children are already sold out for a production the theater describes as "contemporary with classical overtones."
Jere Hodgin wants the show to speak directly to the hundreds of kids who will see it. "The set, the costumes, they'll all have a contemporary European flavor to them. The men's clothing will look like something right out of the fashion books in Europe right now - we're setting it in the Verona of today.
"Re-creating the older [Elizabethan] period is valid, but for my purposes I want to make sure that the themes and the humanity in this play are accessible to everyone today. The themes are more relevant this way than in a historical setting, points about tolerance and prejudice, for example, and young people solving their problems through violence.
"In a day when communities are riddled with drive-by shootings, it doesn't feel an awful lot different than what I read in the Washington Post or The New York Times, people saying, `Enough! We want our streets back!'''
Hodgin, who calls "West Side Story" the most successful modern adaptation of the Romeo and Juliet theme, says he briefly considered setting the production in contemporary Los Angeles.
"But I think that in some ways that limits the play. The issues that are being dealt with here are happening in Roanoke and Charlotte and Greensboro - you don't have to stick it in an isolated large city environment and say it only happens there," said Hodgin.
Down on the set, Juliet's parents and family retainers are wailing and mourning the death of their daughter when Hodgin suddenly yells, "OK, that's great, let's stop." The dead Juliet suddenly comes alive and laughs loudly at somebody's joke. She jumps off the stage and heads up to the box to speak to an interviewer.
This is Dina Comolli's first chance to play Juliet. Like Romeo, Dina (pronounced DEE-nuh) is startlingly young-looking, with brown hair, dark eyebrows and thin, delicate features.
"I've auditioned for this role every chance I've gotten and I couldn't be happier.
``My last role was playing someone who was nine months pregnant. Well, I've never been pregnant, but I have more in common with this role. I've been there, I've been 14, I've been in love, I've had the difficulties with parents," said Comolli.
The Pennsylvania native says she prepared for playing Juliet by living with Shakespeare's text for months. "I spend lots of time first on the poetry itself. There are certain methods to help you bring the most to the poetry, certain hints in the text, scansion and other things."
Comolli, in her early 20s, says the role of the doomed teen-age lover makes huge demands on an actress, which is why it's "difficult, though not impossible" to find real 13- or 14-year-olds who can do it convincingly.
Is it hard to, say, summon up tears onstage?
"It's very tough. I've always found it challenging, but the language itself brings you there.
"The thing to remember is this: If the love is there, the pain will be there, too," says Comolli, as she leaves the box for a final run-through before calling it a day.
Jere Hodgin is tired but happy as quitting time comes at 6 p.m.
"Every time I do this play I find new things in it. There's a genius to Shakespeare that just defies time and period - the more I work with this play the more I see the absolute splendor of it. You can never get to the bottom of Shakespeare."
nMill Mountain Theatre's "Romeo and Juliet": Through March 12, main stage. Tickets, $14 to $18. Shows are Wednesday through Saturday evenings, with Saturday and Sunday matinees. Previews tonight and Thursday night. 342-5740.
by CNB