“You just can’t help it. You feel pretty cool when you are pointing a sword at someone and telling them they’re in big trouble,” said a laughing Matthew Amendt who plays Mercutio in Alley Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet.
Anyone fortunate enough to have seen the Alley’s 2022 production of Born With Teeth, the two- hander Amendt did as Christopher Marlowe with Alley Company Member Dylan Godwin as William Shakespeare knows that this is good news that Amendt is back for an Alley production.
“I love this play so dearly. It’s a play that repeats in an actor’s life in a way that few plays do, maybe Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, a few Shakespeare plays that keep popping up in your life,” Amendt said. In fact, he played Mercutio in college.
“It’s a wonderful play if you’re lucky enough to be asked to do it again and again to kind of check in with yourself about where you are in your own life. I think that especially after having played Marlowe here,” Amendt said. “[Alley Artistic Director Rob Melrose] was very interested in that strain that runs through Shakespeare of the wild cards that appear in the plays in the way that Marlowe was kind of a wild card in Shakespeare’s life.
“Mercutio is certainly that in this play. He kind of comes in, stirs the pot. He has strong opinions that run counter to the major melody of the play.
“What I see is someone who cares maybe too much. He’s haunted by his relationship to the prince, his love for Romeo. By his military service in the past. I think he was a soldier in another life in this version of the play He doesn’t have the ability to move past any of that. So I think he feels time moving on without him and leads to panic a bit. That kind of kicks off the violence of the play.”
Romeo and Juliet, of course, is the story of young lovers whose families – the Montagues and the Capulets –are at odds and certainly don’t want them to marry. The two fall in love at a party, marry secretly and then through a series of mishaps end up dead.
While the play sticks to the classic text, Melrose has bookended it with brief modern day scenes that echo the tourism aspect that Shakespeare himself employed in writing about what Italy was like.
The cast also includes Alley’s Resident Acting Company members Elizabeth Bunch as Lady Capulet, Michelle Elaine as Nurse, Dylan Godwin as Benvolio, Chris Hutchison as Tybalt, Melissa Molano as Juliet, David Rainey as Lord Capulet and Christopher Salazar as Friar Lawrence.
Also, Orlando Arriaga as Lord Montague, Mason Dowd as Abraham/Romeo Understudy, Brandon Hearnsberger as Paris/Ensemble, Rob B. Kellogg as Romeo, Callee Miles as Ensemble/Juliet Understudy, Claire Metusalem as Ensemble, Allison Pistorius as Lady Montague, Allysia Peine as Ensemble, Spencer Plachy as Gregory/Friar John/Ensemble, Forrest Stringfellow as Sampson/Mercutio Understudy, Alexandra Szeto-Joe as Peter, and Gabriel Regojo as Balthasar/Ensemble. Additional Understudies include Bryan Jahnke, Woody Minshew, and Micah Weese.
Of note is that some of these actors on stage are part of the new, University of Houston/Alley Theatre Professional Actor Training Program. In a new third year of the MFA program, selected students are in residence at Alley Theatre, working directly with the Alley company and other professional actors.
Eighth grade was actually the first time that Amendt and Romeo and Juliet crossed paths, as he and other students took turns reading out certain scenes from the play in class.
“It’s always a dangerous play to introduce to eight graders because on the one hand you’re learning about it in school which is not cool. And on the other hand, you’re 14 and the number of sex jokes and sword fights and romantic scenes and really charged erotic love scenes and the danger of it and the youth and the muscularity is like the coolest thing ever,” Amendt said.
Speaking of dangerous, Amendt said the swords they are working with are real and that to master the art of swordsmanship on stage “You have to build very slowly.
“You have to move with real intent and make sure that you’re locking down your footwork, that you’re targeting the cuts and the slices and the thrusts are all headed in a very specific direction so that your partner can know what’s happening. To be honest – I’m knocking on wood here — but almost every show I’ve been in with big sword fights, somebody gets a dink or a dunk or a broken finger here or there.”
He told a story he heard from actor Stacy Keach while they were in a play together in D.C. “He told me a story once about too much stage fog in a scene one night and an actor taking a broadsword to the pec that tore their pec. They went to the emergency room and the surgeon said ‘Do you mind if I bring some students in here?’ The guy said ‘That’s OK, that’s OK.’ And the students came in and the surgeon said ‘I’d like to have you all here because it’s the only time in your career that you’re going to do medieval surgery. This is how we suture a sword wound.’”
Why do people still turn out for Romeo and Juliet?
“A couple of reasons. First and foremost it’s some of the most well written scenes in the English language,” Amendt said. “There are so many lines that are in our consciousness. To see them in three dimensions it just one of the coolest experiences you can have.
“I also think Shakespeare was interested in the idea of a timeless love in this play. As you work on it you can feel echoes of Greek love stories almost. He was very interested in the age of Italy. He’s interested in love across generations and across time. And what their love story does to the community.”
Performances have been extended and are scheduled for September 25 through October 18 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and 7 p.m. Sundays at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $36-$91.
