Review: ROMEO AND JULIET at Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum

A boy, a girl, “two households both alike in dignity” at war with each other for reasons that nobody even remembers. A thwarted, impossible-love affair, written in the stars, but not to be. Whatever the setting, whenever the time, who or what else can we be talking about but Shakespeare’s ROMEO AND JULIET?

The title lovers of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedy are – as director Willow Geer puts it in her program notes  - “so young. They’re teenagers.” As are Asher Hagler and Quinnlyn Scheppner, the two actors Geer has cast in her production of R&J that kicks off the 2026 summer season at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. As obvious as this spot-on casting would seem to be, this can be a trickier needle to thread than one might think. Two actors who are still in high school wrestling down the spectrum of emotions, growth journeys and heartbreak of Shakespeare’s tale (to say nothing of the verse) is no small achievement. The text specifies that Juliet is 13. As fast as teen-agers grow up (or think they do), one has to wonder for the purposes of a performance…can high school-aged actors credibly “get” this story?

These two can, and do. Hagler and Scheppner make their marks; they are charismatic, genuine and, yes, also very young. Director Geer and her team has placed the tale in New York’s Gilded Age. Here, the warring Capulets and Montagues are the robber baron Callahans and the working class tenement Mulligans who, in theory, toil away in the factories owned by the Callahans. Meaning the Astors and Rockefellers are on the guest list for the Callahan Ball), Juliet is presumably of a different social class than her beloved (the film TITANIC comes to mind), and Romeo is eventually banished not to Mantua but to Hoboken. Apart from some of these textual tweaks and the costumes by A. Jeffrey Schoenberg which spiff up the male Callhans, the period overlay doesn’t come heavily into play. Regular Botanicum patrons will encounter many of the company’s regulars including Max Lawrence (as the same-named Fridar) and TB Co-Producing Artistic Director Ellen Geer (also Scheppner’s grandmother playing her Nurse). As ever, the woodland-set stage in Topanga Canyon is a summer favorite.

For the purposes of this production – and especially with five roles understudied at the performance I attended - we’ll stick largely to what’s going on between Juliet and her Romeo.

We meet Hagler first. After the opening street brawl between the Mulligans and the Callahans (staged with great full stage-encompassing brio by fight choreographer Cavin (CR) Morhardt, and after quasi-instigator Benvolio (Jesse Corwin) has explained what went down to the Mulligan elders (Billy Walker and Brooke Healey), the play shifts away from civil division and to matters of love. Enter, natch, Romeo, who it will be remembered, is pining for Rosaline before he has his fateful encounter at the Callhan ball. And while the curly-haired Hagler can talk the “she is rich in beauty” game, his demeanor suggests that the Rosaline crush   is no all-consuming passion.

We have met Romeos who are in love with being in love from the jump. That is not this particular Mulligan. Hagler has a winning schoolboy’s grin, which he employs through much of the production’s early acts. He’s the tag-along with the rabble-rousing Benvolio and Mercutio (Rhett Curry). But when he first spots Juliet in the course of the dance, he takes her aside for that “kiss…by the book” by interrupting into her dance with another man – cutting in with an affable smile.

Romeo in love often finds a new gear, and that’s the case here as Hagler maneuvers in and out of forest nooks, circling back to Juliet’s balcony to learn that the object of his affection is equally into him. The youthfulness of both actors lends credibility to the notion that this Romeo and Juliet are dealing with feelings the likes of which they have never previously experienced. For anybody. Ever. That the discussion then proceeds to “honorable intentions” feels similarly by the book. This Romeo and Juliet very clearly like each other, but not in a smoldering, we have to get to our marriage bed RIGHT NOW kind of way. Even the Act III parting scene after their wedding night feels largely chaste.

Scheppner’s Juliet, meanwhile, must figure things out on her own, both as dictated by expectations of her gender and by her family’s social status. She is likely just old enough to be embarrassed by her nurse’s sex jokes even if she doesn’t necessarily understand them.  Ever the dutiful daughter, Juliet seems willing enough to consider marrying Paris (Ethan Haslam) who is her parent’s choice. Then she falls for a Mulligan.

I’d argue that Juliet’s journey from dutiful daughter to defiant, true wife is more complicated than Romeo’s. During the aforementioned balcony scene, Scheppner takes us through Juliet’s wrestling with the messy wonderfulness of falling in love, balancing her tender feelings with the practicality of figuring about what has to come next and how to get there. Once wedded, and  in her subsequent interactions with Geer’s nurse and with the iron hand of her parents Lord and Lady Callahan (Jon Sprik and Michelle Jaso), any previous youthfulness is gone. Now Scheppner’s Juliet is a woman facing real adult problems.

And facing them alone. The actress has us feeling Juliet’s skepticism over whether Lawrence’s crazy potion-drinking plan will work or kill her, and entirely in sympathy as person after trusted person betrays her. When Scheppner picks up a dagger (as she does twice), we have no doubt that she has the strength and the force of will to use it.

Overall, the production is successful and, in addition to breaking the seal on the Theatricum’s summer of 2026, is an opportunity for audiences to watch young love in action. For what figures to be a very different spin on the same tale, the playbill teases  an upcoming November production by the Open Fist Theatre Company which will find regular Theatricum company members Alan Blumenfeld and Katherine James (a husband and wife team, both of whom are in their 70s) playing Romeo and Juliet in a production set in a retirement community.

Note: In the performance I attended, the roles of Lord Callahan, Tybalt, Paris, Peter and Friar John were performed by understudies Ethan Haslam, Shane McDermot, Tomas Francois, Elliott Wilson and Jason Hayes respectively. 

Photo of Quinnlyn Scheppner and Asher Hagler by Ian Flanders.