The stars of screen and stage align as Orlando Bloom (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Tony Award Nominee Condola Rashad (Stick Fly) take on the roles of Shakespeare’s legendary star-crossed lovers, ROMEO AND JULIET.
The most famous love story ever told returns to Broadway for the first time in 36 years in a stunning new production from five-time Tony nominee David Leveaux. Jealousy. Prejudice. Betrayal. And the chance that true love could actually conquer all. That’s Romeo and Juliet.
When you get to the theater, make sure to share the love! Patrons are encouraged to bring locks to hang on our #RJLOVELOCK fence outside of our theater. Patrons can also check into ROMEO AND JULIET on Broadway on Facebook and receive a free lock from the merchandise stand.
Alas, these lovers are not just star-crossed but so mismatched that they could be from different galaxies in director David Leveaux's busy-with-brainstorms but broad and surprisingly unmoving production. Bloom -- more famously the elf prince and a Caribbean pirate -- makes a dashing, appealing, if not exactly youthful Romeo. He has a flashy entrance in ripped jeans on a motorcycle that, ask not why, is never seen again and he catapults from a playful romantic to a doomed one with a winning grace. It hurts to have to say this, but Rashad -- who has much-deserved Tony nominations for 'Stick Fly' and 'The Trip to Bountiful' -- is not a natural Shakespearean. Her voice has little variety, and she basically has two expressions -- happy and n
The poster shot of Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad for Romeo and Juliet, clad in purest white and lost in each other's eyes on a bed of snowy linens, could be a perfume commercial. Let's call it William Shakespeare's Obsession. But the dreamy intoxication that such a heady fragrance might transmit is largely missing from David Leveaux's snoozy modern-dress production, along with poetry and heat. Bloom is the big name on the marquee and he makes a confident Broadway debut, roaring onto the stage on a motorcycle no less. But such contemporary trappings never quite amount to a distinctive edge.
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