As the curtain rises, a sad guitar sound reaches the ears of the audience. The speaker leisurely tells the cursed love story of the feuding families Caplay and Montague. From the beginning, we seem to be with him. Together they witnessed the love process between men and women who were enemies in this world, a thrilling love tragedy.

Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" is already a well-known story. From ancient times to the present, many people have performed this play. After it has been performed repeatedly, how do you make it interesting and unconventional? The interpretation is undoubtedly the biggest test for the director. What makes me happy is that what I saw in "Shakespeare Unplugged - Romeo and Juliet" was not an exaggerated, pretentious and disgusting love story, but a timeless and fresh style, full of youthful colors. Sketch.

In this play, the director deliberately selected five male actors to perform a classic love story such as "Romeo and Juliet". It is easy to think of whether the director wanted to play with gender issues or to make a It is a play with gay themes, but in fact the director just wants to grasp the characteristic of Shakespeare's drama that "only boys can act on stage" and recreate the stage play of Shakespeare's era in modern times, just like the title of the play "Shakespeare Unplugged", Return all stage performance elements to Shakespeare's era. There is no need for gorgeous stages and props, and the performance returns to the physical performance of the actors. Even if the whole play is performed by male actors, the female characters they play can still be believed and accepted by the audience without any sense of ridicule.

Having watched the movie "Romeo and Juliet" starring Leonardo DiCaprio, it is not difficult to notice some similarities in the performance styles of the two plays: the images of Romeo and Juliet created by the director are both It is more modern rather than a Shakespearean character who is far away from the audience. The characters in the play do not wear luxurious evening gowns or dinner suits. Instead, they appear in leather jackets, leather pants, riding boots, headscarves, and silver jewelry, showing a strong punk style, just like the rebellious young men and women nowadays. The bold and willful view of love is no different from that of boys and girls nowadays. Perhaps it is for this reason that even though the whirlwind love of Romeo and Juliet seems so sudden and thoughtless to outsiders, it can still make the audience feel excited.

Compared with other versions of "Romeo and Juliet" that have been performed in the past, some focus on showing the poignancy of this tragic love, and some focus on showing the romance of the couple's falling in love. I think the director has In "Shakespeare Unplugged - Romeo and Juliet", more emphasis is placed on the time when this love affair took place. The young couple Romeo and Juliet were only fourteen or fifteen years old, and they should have the innocence and cuteness of a boy and a girl. , their attitude towards feelings is simple, not as complicated as adult love. They fell in love with each other at first sight because their emotional experience is not very rich. When they suddenly fall in love with a boy or When a girl has a crush, it's easy to get stuck in it and be unable to extricate herself. During the ball, Romeo was holding ice cream and Juliet was holding balloons. We can feel their youth and innocence from their external images, and through the physical performances of the two actors, I also saw fourteen and ten years old. The five-year-old boy and girl are filled with cuteness, willfulness and sweetness in their hearts. Because the two families have been enemies of each other for generations, they must arm themselves with appearance. However, under their rebellious, violent and bloody appearance, Romeo In fact, Juliet and Juliet are innocent and simple at heart, and they can risk everything for love. I think I am luckier than other viewers because these two actors happen to be my classmates. While enjoying this classic love drama, I can clearly feel that they are far from the extremely mature big boys they usually are. During the 100 minutes of the performance on stage, they were indeed the playful Romeo and the innocent Juliet who were fourteen or fifteen years old. Appreciating the performances of the two protagonists, I felt so innocent when I saw them facing this love. She has a cute and knowing smile and a natural sweetness on the stage.

Although this play does not use a gorgeous stage as a gimmick, nor does it use many props, I really like the design of using a scaffolding as the background and placing a spring platform in the center of the stage. .

In order to match the overall punk style, the stage design also uses metal-like materials. The iron scaffolding and spring platform are not very gorgeous but have substantial benefits: the scaffolding on the stage belongs to the Caplet family in the play. The balcony is also the dressing room for the actors who play multiple roles. Romeo and Juliet exchanged tokens and promised each other a lifetime through this scaffolding; the scaffolding on the right stage is not only the performance stage of the musicians, but also the residence of the medicine seller and the soul of Mou Kexiu. Through this scaffolding, the audience can see how the soul of the tragic death expressed its dissatisfaction and anger towards the Caplet family; the spring platform in the middle stage is not only the Caplet family hall, but also the garden, the church, and the square. On the spring stage, actors can sit, stand, lie down, and jump. Even though most of the content is performances without physical objects, through the actors' physical performances and the use of small props (such as spreading white cloth or Red cloth) can differentiate the scene without using dark field lights. I think that in the performance of modern dramas, most directors have relied too much on the light and dark of lights as the demarcation of scene changes, and rarely think about how the scene changes can still be achieved even without lighting effects when the oldest dramas are staged. What kind of modern drama relies on a dark field effect similar to the camera transitions in TV and movies to switch the images of each scene? If we return to the essence of dramatic performance, modern drama should not use such a tricky method (just dimming the lights on the scene would be too easy) to handle the transition between each scene; therefore, I very much appreciate the use of the stage in this play It is possible to see one scene to the end, and there is no dark scene to interrupt the audience's attention during the 100-minute performance. At the same time, the plot can be fully expressed, and the transition between scenes does not make the audience feel abrupt. This is quite commendable.

However, returning to the stage scenery presentation method, two pieces of scenery hung on the scaffolding present the street graffiti culture on the stage in the form of picture collage, in an attempt to deepen the youthful color of the whole play. and punk style, this is a bold and innovative attempt. After all, it mixes modern youth culture in a classic Western love drama, and it is bound to receive polarized reviews. Such extreme reactions are due to cultural differences of the times and different perspectives on things, and I will not discuss them further here. What I want to point out is that the fonts used for "Montague" and "Capulet" on the left and right sets are too cautious and regular, which is somewhat contrary to the rebellious atmosphere of crazy, bold, and desperate for what you love in the play; another On the other hand, the street graffiti pictures selected for the set are not closely related enough, so that the audience cannot directly read the meaning that the designer hopes to convey from the pictures when watching the set, and the effect presented is inevitable. Need a discount.

It is worth mentioning that the director added rock and roll elements to "Shakespeare Unplugged - Romeo and Juliet". Not only did four musicians play instruments live as a scene changer or part of The situation of the plot is created, and several important plots are sung by actors, making the whole play lively and interesting, as exciting as attending a concert, which also highlights the importance of the play. Punk style (because when people talk about "punk", they often think of heavy metal bands and rock music); the most special thing is that the director transformed their "swords" into Into "Electric Guitar", the sword fight scene was transformed into a guitar competition, cleverly avoiding the bloody fight that would never be realistic on the stage, and cleverly combining it with the aforementioned rock music performance. The only fly in the ointment is that several actors don't seem to have been well trained in singing. As a result, their voices are obviously weakened as soon as they sing, their enunciation is not clear enough, and they also have out-of-tune problems. This is nothing more than an auditory interference for the audience. , which is quite a pity.

In addition, it is very thought-provoking how to retain the poetic nature of Shakespeare's poetic English words when they are presented in Chinese translations. The beauty of Shakespeare's scripts lies in their refined language, but after translation, I want to retain them completely. The rhythm of it is really difficult.

In this play, although the director deliberately wanted to deal with such language conversion obstacles and chose a translation that was closest to the poetic vocabulary and tried to preserve the rhythmic beauty between the lines of Shakespeare's words, he was still not able to achieve perfection. Some lines had some problems at the end of sentences. Without rhyme, it lacks the powerful power of the overall rhyme; this is especially obvious in several sung lyrics. When writing the song, the music designer did not rewrite the lyrics but directly applied the lines in the Chinese translation, unwilling to destroy the influence of Shakespeare's text. It's good if the intention is good, but it can't help but make people feel uncomfortable when they hear it. It always feels like they forced non-rhyming lyrics into the song, which makes people feel uncomfortable. I think there must be great differences between the classical English in Shakespeare's time and the language used in Taiwan today. Whether it is changes caused by time or space, the transformation of vocabulary has repeatedly tested contemporary directors who try to reproduce Shakespeare's plays; Can Weng's poetic words be used in Taiwan's contemporary theater?