‘Juliet: A Revenge Comedy’ subverts classic Shakespeare romance

What if Juliet doesn’t take her life?

That question launches “Juliet: A Revenge Comedy,” a fast, feminist action-comedy from Monster Theatre, presented as part of One Yellow Rabbit’s 40th anniversary festival in Calgary, which premieres on Wednesday.

Co-playwright and director Ryan Gladstone traces the idea back to a single audition piece and a growing frustration with how classic playwright William Shakespeare treats his female characters.

“She did an audition piece where she’s Juliet, she wakes up, Romeo’s dead beside her, and she can’t find a good way to kill herself,” Gladstone said. “The poison’s empty. The knife isn’t sharp enough. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s genius.'”

That moment became the foundation for a show that takes a closer second look at the women of Shakespeare.

“It’s not just like, ‘Oh, we’re looking at it from a different perspective,'” Gladstone said. “It’s really a new story. It starts there and goes a thousand other places.”

Onstage, Juliet relives her death again and again — what Gladstone describes as an “eternal recurrence” — until one version of Juliet stops.

“Eventually, one time she kind of just pauses and thinks about it,” he said. “She’s like, ‘I just met this guy two days ago. I’m only 13 years old. What am I doing here?'”

That pause is what breaks the pattern — as Juliet slips out of her own scripts and moves freely through Shakespeare’s canon, encountering Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Cleopatra and others — all performed in rapid-fire physical comedy by Carly Pokoradi.

“She steps off the stage into the audience and is loose in the complete works of William Shakespeare,” Gladstone said. “And they figure out that this guy, Shakespeare, has been forcing them to die over and over and over.”

Shakespeare appears, too, played by Gladstone himself.

“We take the piss out of him,” he said. “He deserves to be made fun of just like everyone else.”

While the script rewards Shakespeare fans, Gladstone built the show for audiences who don’t know the canon at all.

“You don’t have to know anything,” he said. “You’re going to laugh your ass off.”

“Juliet: A Revenge Comedy” runs Jan. 21-24 at the Martha Cohen Theatre as part of the 40th Annual High Performance Rodeo by One Yellow Rabbit Theatre.

Tickets and showtimes can be found online.