Nearly a decade ago, Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis kicked up a firestorm with a politically charged production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that presented the title character as a doppelganger for Donald Trump (and made him oddly sympathetic in the process). These days, it seems like no New York theater can stage a Shakespeare play without some attempt to frame it for modern audiences in some stylized way. And now the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park program is presenting a contemporary take on Romeo & Juliet that resets the tragedy along the border wall of the U.S. and casts the Capulets and Montagues as bitter foes in the current debate over immigration.
Director Saheem Ali brings some inspired ideas to his approach. The Montagues, including Romeo himself, are Spanish speakers who often dress in native Mexican garb or camo to protest along the border, hanging signs like “Defund the wall!” Daniel Bravo Hernández’s Romeo and other kinsman deliver whole speeches in Spanish, sometimes pausing to translate a line or two, while Ra’mya Latiah Aikens’s Juliet is presented as a student of the language who picks up pointers from one of the family servants (Marlon Xavier). He’s now billed as Pedro, instead of Peter, and he’s the one who seeks the help of Romeo and Benvolio (Zack Lopez Roa) to translate the guest list for the big Capulet party that the Montague cousins will crash.
Ali and his design team lean into the us vs. them aesthetic. Maruti Evans’s striking set features an upstage rendering of the wall and two white statues suggestive of Mexican culture looming just behind — one of the Virgin Mary and the other of a similar veiled figure with a Día de los Muertos face. Dana Botez’s costumes are exquisite, contrasting the rich, heavily embroidered outfits of the senior Montagues with the black milaristic garb of the Capulets, while lighting designer Christopher Akerlind creates memorable stage tableaux with bold color choices (as in the fateful dual death scene at the end). Ali also introduced three black-clad hooded figures with stark white masks who hover about the proceedings in key scenes, portentous omens of the tragedy that awaits.
But recasting the Capulets as an unrepentant squadron of ICE agents subverts the intentions of the original text — which famously opens with a chorus introducing “two households, both alike in dignity.” (Here, the prologue is sung by Francis Jue’s Friar Lawrence.) For a New York City audience in 2026, it’s nearly impossible to hold these two clans as “alike in dignity.” Indeed, this is the first time that I’ve ever heard spontaneous applause when Romeo avenges the death of his slain cousin Mercutio (Caleb Joshua Eberhardt) by killing the captain of the Capulet brigade Tybalt (a sneering Ariyan Kassam) — which occurs just after a band of Montagues has unfurled protest banners and scrawled “Abolish ICE” on columns of the wall.
Luckily, Ali carves ample space in his muddled political framework to tell the familiar story, and to tell it well. As is often true in Shakespeare in the Park productions in the Delacorte Theater, the acting tends toward the ingratiatingly broad — here perhaps to compensate for the fact that so many speeches are delivered entirely, or almost entirely, in Spanish. (Translation by Alfedo Michel Modenessi.) Eberhardt goes full panto in his long comedic monologue about the fairy midwife Queen Mab and the futility and fickleness of men’s desires. The same is true of Jue’s Friar and Dierdre O’Connell’s joint-smoking Nurse, who literally bridges the language gap in updated lines like, “Go, girl, seek happy noches to happy días.” (The show does not use supertitles and often skips immediate translation, but non-Spanish speakers should be able to grasp the general meaning of the extended dialogue en español — though familiarity with the original play is a plus.)
The heart of the play remains its star-crossed lovers, and Hernández and Aikens capture the impetuousness of first love, false bravado giving way to gawky vulnerability. While Aikens sometimes overplays the little-girlishness in her balcony scene and her bedside chats with the Nurse, she’s better in her more reflective monologues, bringing a focused intensity to a heroine with real agency. LaChanze brings a sassy energy to Lady Capulet, prettily delivering a brief love song and beginning a bedside chat with her daughter with an improvised, “Well, girl.”
One of the reasons we return to the Bard — and to any classic work — is to find the thread that make a centuries-old story relevant to today’s audiences. Ali succeeds in crafting some memorable stage images, and of depicting the challenges for youthful love to survive the prejudices of families from different backgrounds. But he goes too far by taking sides between the rival clans, making the show’s ultimate reconciliation feel less like welcome detente and more like surrender. A hollow victory indeed. ★★★☆☆
ROMEO & JULIET
Delacorte Theatre, Central Park
Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets available for free through five different locations/methods through June 28