Never was a story of more woe

Last weekend I saw "Romeo and Juliet," "Henry IV" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."  Writing any one of them would be a noteworthy accomplishment.  That the same man wrote all three is astounding.  The task of expressing that wonder should fall to a poet of the stature of a . . . a . . . Shakespeare.

"Henry IV" closed Sunday afternoon at Scott Hall at the University.  "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was on television Sunday night.  So though both were good, the opportunity to see them has stopped knocking.  But "Romeo and Juliet" is at the World Theaters Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  This is one opportunity you shouldn't pass up.

Few pairs of lovers are as well-known as Romeo and Juliet.  Few love stories are as famous as theirs.  The play is not Shakespeare's best, but it is possibly his most popular.  With Franco Zeffirelli's film it has attained a new sort of popularity:  young people have snatched it as their own.

It has always been comforting to young girls in love that "Juliet was only thirteen."  But Juliet has never been played that way.  The leads in the first film version were played by an actor and an actress in their forties.  Zeffirelli, the director of the new movie, wanted to do the play like he thought Shakespeare meant it, so he found a pair of teenagers to play the leads.

Olivia Hussey is fifteen years old.  When the movie opened in London she was too young to see it without her parents.  She is sweet; she is pure; she is beautiful--she is Juliet.  Leonard Whiting is equally appropriate for his role as Shakespeare's beautiful young man with a poet's soul.  He is impulsive, sensitive and idealistic.  Leonard and Olivia are the youngest actors ever to play the star-crossed lovers professionally.

They make the play their own, but the supporting cast is superb.  John McEnery is very, very good as Mercutio.  Pat Heywood steals several scenes as the nurse.

The movie was filmed in a section of northern Italy which has changed little since the Renaissance; all of the settings are beautiful, as are the costumes.

Zeffirelli cut all of the explanatory speeches, so the movie, with about half the lines of the play, sacrifices some of Shakespeare's  poetry for his action.  And a great deal of action is there--the battle scenes are especially well done.

Get there early; the lines are long.