'Romeo and Juliet' overwhelmed by edgy setting.

Byline: THEATER REVIEW by Fred Crafts The Register-Guard

ASHLAND - Mercutio is stabbed with a switchblade. Tybalt is shot with a revolver. Peter is paged on a cell phone. This is not your father's "Romeo and Juliet."

Out are captivating Elizabethan costumes and swashbuckling swordfighting sequences. In are black threads and long, grim faces. Romeo and Juliet are no longer innocent teens who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, but willful young adults, knowingly pushing the line and prepared to pay for it with their lives.

No, Toto, we are not in Kansas any more in this new Oregon Shakespeare Festival production (in the Bowmer Theatre). We have landed in a barren, futuristic space delineated by the words "IN FAIR VERONA" plastered billboard-size on the towering white walls that hover over the proceedings like prison walls, marking Verona as not a very nice place.

Hedonistic Vernona is overrun by gangs of idle young men who are preoccupied with sex, booze and slamming each other. The inept adults are powerless to stop them. Society is out of control and spiraling downward. The streetwise star-crossed lovers are swept along. What a mess.

If ever a concept overwhelmed a script, this is it.

In trying something different with the much-performed "Romeo and Juliet," Loretta Greco has provided a splashy techno atmosphere - platforms that rise from the floor at odd angles, actors who arrive like invading armies, lights that probe the darkness like searchlights, bombastic music that cues every emotional response - that overrides the plight of the young lovers.

Whoa. Too much. Back off. Get real.

Although Greco's approach is flashy window dressing, the good news is that the essential power and truth of Shakespeare's romantic narrative survives it.

Nancy Rodriguez and Kevin Kenerly, who play the naive Juliet and her lovestruck Romeo, may have left their teen years far behind, but they play their roles with uncommon charm, skill and intelligence.

Too often, however, they disappear in the frenzy around them, ably provided by Andrea Frye (as Juliet's huffy nurse), Jeffrey King (Capulet), Jos Viramontes (Tybalt), Duane Boutte (Mercutio), Richard Howard (Friar Laurence) and Robert Vincent Frank (Escalus).

Visual splendor is one of the hallmarks of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And if that's your thing, then this theatrical production's stark scenic designs by Robert Brill, nervy costumes by Alex Jaeger, brash lighting by James Vermeulen, evocative music by Todd Barton and exciting fights by John Sipes will be highly rewarding. If not ...

Fred Crafts can be reached at 338-2575 or [e-mail].