Splinter Group Production of Shakespeare’s R&J Set for Bath Shakespeare Festival

Shakespeare’s R&J, the 1998/99 Off-Broadway hit adaptation of Romeo and Juliet by Joe Calarco, will be presented by The Splinter Group as part of the Fifth Annual Bath Shakespeare Festival in March with an eye toward a West End transfer in the fall.

The critically acclaimed play, which opened in New York at the John Houseman Theatre, concerns four young men at a Catholic boys’ school who discover a copy of Shakespeare’s play about star-cross’d lovers and act it out in secret; as they do so, the lines between the characters’ situations and the boys’ own repressive lives begin to blur.

The R & J cast consists of Jeremy Beck, Jason Dubin, Matthew Sincell, and Jason Michael Spelbring. Calarco, who directed Nijinsky’s Last Dance and Side Show for the Signature Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. and wrote In the Absence of Spring for New York’s Second Stage Theatre and Sarah Plain and Tall for Theatreworks USA, will also be directing the production.

After a series of invitation-only previews in New York, Shakespeare’s R & J will be performed at the Theatre Royal Bath (March 11-15) and the Coventry Belgrade Theatre (March 18-22). For more information about the Bath engagement, visit the website www.bathshakespeare.org.uk.