Shakespeare’s timeless love story is told with an exacting attention to time in Synetic’s heart-stoppingly romantic “Romeo and Juliet,” which finds the theater company continuing the momentum it began earlier this season with the bewitchingly atmospheric “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Obsessive love of a different ilk is explored in this production, a wordless 90-minute adaptation by Paata Tsikurishvili and Nathan Weinberger that adroitly uses the language of dance and movement. Often miming the circular movement of watch hands, Irina Tsikurishvili’s choreography hurtles forward at a dizzying, fevered pace.
This is love at its freshest and most maddeningly immediate, as Romeo (Ben Cunis) and Juliet (Courtney Pauroso) seem almost clocked by their first-sight passion after glimpsing one another in a public square. From then on, there is no turning back, as the lovers race through an eternity of emotions, kisses and caresses in a few short weeks.
The theme of love caught in time is symbolized by Anastasia Simes’ mechanical set, a world of wheels and cogs that seems like a more monstrous version of the gearshifts in which Charlie Chaplin found himself entangled in “Modern Times.” A large pendulum swings playfully as Romeo and Juliet indulge in a flirty game of toss when they first meet. Soon, though, the pendulum takes on more portentous meaning, as its slow and inexorable sway signals that time soon will stop for the lovers, who will be forever young, forever frozen in a frenzied moment.
Romeo and Juliet’s story is told through movement that is dreamlike and delirious — their dance is slower and more deliberate than the dizzying whirl of the superb ensemble dancers (Vato Tsikurishvili, Madeline Carr, Meghan Grady, Ryan Sellers). Miss Tsikurishvili’s choreography and Mr. Tsikurishvili’s filmic visual sense are at their height in the famous love scene, which unfolds behind an undulating, backlit white sheet. The lovers’ bodies flicker and loom like twin dancing candle flames.
Miss Pauroso and Mr. Cunis are outstanding as the lovers — impossibly young, gorgeous and lithe creatures whose passion is expressed in an almost otherworldly grace. They seem to have passed over already into another realm. In contrast to the doomed magnetism of their performances, a sprightly bit of levity is present in the lusty earthiness of Marissa Molnar’s Nurse and Philip Fletcher’s rowdy prankster, Mercutio.
The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is not in their star-crossed fates, but in the knowledge that something this heightened could never stand the test of time. Its beauty lies in its brevity, the perfection of its distilled intensity, which is extinguished before age and cares nibble away at the tender edges of its heart.
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WHAT: “Romeo and Juliet,” by William Shakespeare, adapted by Paata Tsikurishvili and Nathan Weinberger
WHERE: Synetic Theater at Rosslyn Spectrum, 1611 N. Kent St., Arlington
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Through March 8. Feb. 14 Valentine’s Day Event, 8 p.m. ($40 for performance and reception).
TICKETS: $15 to $35
PHONE: 703/824-8060
WEB SITE: www.synetictheater.org
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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