Shakespeare in the Park's Romeo and Juliet Will Air on PBS

Great Performances will air the Public Theater’s 2026 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Romeo and Juliet on Friday, November 13, on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS app.

Director Saheem Ali’s production was the first time Shakespeare’s story of young star-crossed lovers was seen in Central Park in nearly 20 years. In Ali’s staging, the play unfolds in English, but Romeo and Juliet speak to one another in Spanish.

The production, which ran May 22-June 28, starred Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens as Juliet, Sergio Mauritz Ang as Friar John/Ensemble, Daniel Bravo Hernández as Romeo, Caleb Joshua Eberhardt as Mercutio, Francis Jue as Friar Laurence, Ariyan Kassam as Tybalt, LaChanze as Lady Capulet, Deirdre O’Connell as Nurse, Jason Manuel Olazábal as Lord Montague, Jessica Pimentel as Escalus, and Mariand Torres as Lady Montague.

Dan Rubins wrote in his review for TheaterMania, “The production, which uncomfortably grafts this highly specific contemporary gloss onto the now-bilingual text, is both heavy-handed and incoherent, and more likely to provoke eye-rolls than demonstrations…But Ali knows how to direct actors to communicate meaning through gesture and vibes even when some audiences won’t understand the language.”