Oh, poor Shakespeare!

Well, today I find I really must correct and amend and update and repent and atone for my earlier post about my favorites of 2009!

In fact, I find I really must correct and amend and update and repent and atone for my earlier post that noted that a performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater would be my final show of 2009.

Turns out there was a serious omission. Turns out I neglected to take Romeo and Juliet into consideration. That would be the Romeo and Juliet presented at The Kitchen by Nature Theater of Oklahoma--you know, the folks who put the "w" in mellowdrama, as they hasten to remind us. That show, indeed, is the last one I was scheduled to attend in 2009. I went last night, and now it is definitely one of my favorite things of all time.

NTO's Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper got the cracked idea to call up a batch of people and ask them to recount, to the best of their ability, the plot of Romeo and Juliet, something most had read long ago in high school (or, as they say in this play, HIGH school!) or gotten some vague sense of from West Side Story (don't ask...). The resulting text--call it, perhaps, "Falling Off the Cliff Notes"--is a patchwork of their halting or rambling responses and digressions, declaimed with overwrought verbal drama and body language by actors Anne Gridley and Robert M. Johanson.

Amid all the plot notes, Gridley and Johanson--as mouthpieces for the respondents--also tend to expound at great length on matters as disparate as teenage lust, Anna Nicole Smith, Osama bin Laden, actors' neediness, and the demise of the cocktail party where, they say, people used to go to feel smart. Elisabeth Conner also shows up to...well, I won't try to describe what she does because I don't want to spoil it for you--you are going, aren't you?--and because, well, I just can't.

It's gutsy, hilarious and leaves you aching for the real thing.

Also, Nature Theater of Oklahoma--an Obie-winning, New York City-based troupe--happens to have the best name in theater. If you don't know how they got it, click this link.

So, anyway, sorry, guys! I'mma correct the record: NTO's Liska, Copper, Gridley, Johanson, Conner and their Romeo and Juliet production officially join my list of favorites!


See them at The Kitchen, now through January 17. Here are the details.