[In the following review of Terrence O'Brien's Romeo and Juliet for the 2001 Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Hampton finds the staging uneven in terms of both individual performances and O'Brien's mostly comic directorial additions to the play.]

One of the more persistent peculiarities of American culture has been the insatiable urge of actors, directors and audiences to pass hot summer nights congregating in city parks or country meadows for performances of the plays of William Shakespeare. Pioneered almost half a century ago by Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival, the notion that declaiming Elizabethan blank verse is as much a part of summer as ice cream or watermelon has now grown into a national tradition.

For New Yorkers, one of the more bucolic settings for observing this ritual is the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, now in its 15th season and staging as its second offering of the summer an uneven production of Romeo and Juliet that nonetheless has some unexpected compensations.

The plays are performed under a large tent on the grounds of Boscobel Restoration in Garrison, N.Y. Boscobel is an early-19th-century house regarded as an especially fine example of Federal architecture, and its surrounding lawns and woods provide a sylvan backdrop. The back of the tent is open, affording the audience, sitting on three sides of a bare earth stage, a view of a grassy expanse leading to a woods in the distance. The one drawback is that inside the tent, the temperature on sultry evenings rises to sweltering levels until the sun sets. It is cooler after nightfall, of course, but then the bugs come out.

Terrence O'Brien, the festival's director, has used several ploys to keep the audience's attention on the play rather than the view. He keeps the actors moving in and out of the tent, with some scenes, like the opening brawl between the Capulets and the Montagues, starting on the lawn, then spilling onto the stage. Other scenes are played in the aisles or even behind the audience. Romeo, for example, begins the balcony scene prowling around the perimeter of the tent, as Juliet stands at the rear of one aisle.

Mr. O'Brien has also plumbed the text for as much comic relief as he can find and has even added some clowning of his own, always risky in a tragedy. In the orchard scene, for instance, Romeo takes a pratfall, and Mr. O'Brien underscores any possible sexual innuendo or double-entendre by having his actors grasp their codpieces or gyrate suggestively.

He has more success with other innovative touches. The dance at the Capulets' ball is imaginatively choreographed by Amy O'Brien, with the maskers, dressed like Halloween “Romeo and Juliet” are mixed. For his star-cross'd lovers, Mr. O'Brien has cast two young actors—Sean McNall, a recent college graduate, and Katherine Creel, a recent high school graduate. While they bring a youthful naïveté to the roles and give glimpses of emerging talent, there is not a lot of chemistry between them.

One of the real joys of the production is the performance of Nance Williamson as Juliet's nurse. Ms. Williamson, who enters jogging with a Walkman in this mostly modern staging, has a fine ear for Shakespeare's poetry and turns the Nurse into a genuinely comic role. Stephen Paul Johnson delivers a credible reading of Friar Laurence.

Chris Edwards as Mercutio and Michael Borrelli as Tybalt bring a firebrand's energy to their respective roles but, like some others in the cast, are inclined to shout to carry emotions. Mr. Edwards's Queen Mab soliloquy, for example, reaches a rousing intensity to rival Antony's funeral oration or Henry V's exhortation at Agincourt.