A frustrating fusion of Shakespeare, Prokofiev from the BSO
By Tim Smith for The Baltimore Sun, 17 October 2015
The Montagues and the Capulets aren’t the only opposing forces in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concert version of “Romeo and Juliet” this weekend. Shakespeare fights throughout with Prokofiev, whose music accompanies this frustrating event; both get gravely wounded.
What must have seemed sensible and pretty cool on paper — an acting troupe performs a large portion of the Bard’s beloved tragedy, while the orchestra delivers excerpts from Prokofiev’s brilliant 1930s ballet score “Romeo and Juliet” — ends up doing justice to neither.
When the BSO offered a theatrical version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 2014 with the music Mendelssohn wrote specifically for a staging of the play, the results proved enchanting. This time, two distinct genres are being forced together. It’s an awkward fit. The acting in a ballet is meant to be seen, not heard; the music conjures text and subtext.
On Friday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, some of the most radiant measures Prokofiev ever wrote were treated like underscoring in a movie. Worse, a lot of the music was practically drowned out by the heavily amplified dialogue (I kept wondering if the guys in the sound booth had been instructed: “Louder, louder, we can still hear the orchestra”). And the more the actors shouted, the less decipherable they became.
No, you can’t do Shakespeare’s and Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at once
By Anne Midgette for The Washington Post, 18 October 2015
“I’m not crazy about the music,” the woman behind me told her companion after intermission. Me, I wasn’t crazy about the words.
Objectively speaking, we were both wrong. The music was by Prokofiev, the words by Shakespeare, and both score and text are among the most beloved works by their respective creators: “Romeo and Juliet.”
But playing two works at the same time creates interference that neither the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop nor a fine set of actors under the auspices of the Folger Theatre and director Edward Berkeley could resolve in a performance at Strathmore in North Bethesda on Saturday night.
Throughout the evening, one strained to hear the words through the music or the music over the words or struggled with the dislocating sensation of having the words say one thing while the music appeared to be saying something else. Dramatic pacing is one thing, musical pacing another, and on Saturday, the two met all too seldom.
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