Romeo and Juliet, but without any rehearsals is a comical adaptation by Alpharad and his friends of one of the most famous works of William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. It tells the basic plot of the play but with a creative twist… none of the actors had any rehearsals beforehand, so aside from a basic plot summary and goals for the characters written down on cue cards by Joe Sniffy, the whole production is improvised.
For those who don’t know the plot of Romeo and Juliet (which, if you don’t by now, then what are you doing with your life?) it goes like this; Boy Meets Girl. It's Love at First Sight. But Boy and Girl are members of Feuding Families. Boy secretly marries Girl. Boy's friend is murdered by Girl's cousin, so Boy kills Girl's cousin in a fit of rage, then skips town. Girl agrees to dangerous plot to avoid an Arranged Marriage set up by her parents. Plot goes horribly right. Boy, hearing of Girl's "death," returns to town and kills himself for real at her grave. Girl, waking and discovering this, kills herself in turn. Grief-stricken families reconcile. The End!
The play doesn’t deviate from this basic plot synopsis once, but where the original is a tragedy with minor comedic elements, this play is a comedy with minor tragic elements, mostly in thanks to the actors completely making up the dialogue as they go along, causing the play to have several anachronisms, character changes and very, VERY, minimal sad moments to downplay the comedy.
Balloons, tropes, a bouncy house! Let’s do it!
- Adaptational Comic Relief: Everyone gets this treatment. Nobody here is taken seriously.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Nearly everyone has this treatment. Every character, with the exception of Prince Escolus (except Paris, but he never interacted with Peter), usually berate, humiliate and gaslight Peter (especially Mercutio) every chance they get for no reason whatsoever. Not to mention how Romeo’s angry at Roseline for breaking up with him, not because of any justifiable reason, but because she wanted to stay a virgin. For some reason, his friends sympathise with him for this. Don’t ask.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Paris, in this version, is a legitimately affable, remorseful, kind person who, whilst still perverted in his own right, ultimately cares for the people around him, especially Juliet. He sends messengers to cheer Juliet up and feels guilty for Juliet’s death, even though it technically wasn’t his fault.
- Adapted Out: Gregory & Sampson are relegated to mere background characters without even having a single line of dialogue in this version. Though to be fair, they didn’t have much of a big role in the original.
- Age Lift: Inverted. In the original play, Paris was 25-29 years old but here, he’s only 13, as mentioned by Romeo very briefly during their final encounter. This was most likely done to make Paris, and to a lesser extent, the play itself, far less creepy in hindsight.
- All Men Are Perverts: Both Romeo & Paris are exceptionally horny for Juliet. Paris makes sexual comments towards her like there’s no tomorrow and Romeo has a foot fetish here. The other characters aren’t safe from this either, since Lord Capulet makes a perverted joke to Paris about how “if you want to f**k my daughter, you gotta f**k me first” and comments about his massive penis. Not to mention how he straight up marries Lord Montague in front of his wife (ex-wife technically speaking, Friar Lawrence eventually takes over the mantle of Lady Capulet’s husband).
- Abusive Parents: Lord Montague in this play is this in spades. He lets his son do whatever he wants, but doesn’t care about his own son’s well-being at all. Even during his
one and only scene that he’s in, whilst he does mourn his son’s death initially, he later subverts this by stating that nobody truly cares about his son. - Anachronism Stew: Despite the play being set in the year 1000something, things like Raid: Shadow Legends, phones and Fit-bits exist, but apparently, messengers don’t.
- Anyone Can Die: Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Paris, Lady Montague, either Gregory or Sampson, Tybalt and Paris kick the bucket. By the end, barely any of the main characters survive. However, Mercutio miraculously comes back for the ending, albeit as a ghost.
- Back for the Finale: Mercutio, despite being dead since the finale of the second act, returns as a ghost for the ending musical number.
- Back from the Dead: Mercutio, as mentioned in the above statements.
- Balcony Wooing Scene: Naturally. It is a parody of Romeo and Juliet after all.
- Beyond the Impossible: Need I say more about Mercutio coming back as a ghost? Hell, earlier on in the play, Prince Escolus tries reviving him via in game currency from Raid: Shadow Legends to no avail, making his cameo appearance as a ghost all the more unbelievable.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Between Lord Capulet and Tybalt, since they’re the two characters that serve as the most prominent obstacles to Romeo and Juliet respectively. At least, for the first half. Since Tybalt dies midway through the play, Lord Capulet becomes the sole Big Bad once it’s revealed that he wants to kick out Juliet from his house once married to Paris.
- Big "NO!": Lord Capulet has one when he sees his daughter’s “corpse”. He has another one when he sees it again, only his time, Juliet is truly dead. Paris also gets one under the exact same circumstances (apart from the fact that he dies before he can witness Juliet’s second and final death).
- Black Comedy: Oodles of it, more so than the original, obviously.
- Blue Is Heroic: Most of the heroes in the play wears blue to some degree:
- Romeo wears a dark blue shirt.
- Mercutio wears a light blue shirt.
- Benvolio wears a black robe with a blue shirt underneath.
- And finally Prince Escolus, he wears a royal blue outfit.
- Broken Aesop: Parodied and Played for Laughs. The original message from Romeo and Juliet is completely shattered into pieces here thanks to this adaptation’s comical tone. Whilst Prince Escolus does sing about the violence, cruelty and lack of sympathetic traits of humanity, this is done through singing “Where is the Love” by the “Black Eyed Peas”, which has nothing to do with the themes of the play other than the vague theme of love.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Heavily Downplayed due to, once again, the play’s comedic nature, but the play becomes slightly darker once Mercutio gets killed by Tybalt.
- That Reminds Me of a Song: Once the primary conflict is wrapped up, Prince Escolus states that the whole situation reminded him of a song by Peas of the Black Eye. He then goes on to sing a poorly sung rendition of “Where Is The Love?”, with none of the surviving characters or audience knowing the words to the song (except for Prince Escolus himself) outside of the chorus.
- Wham Line: Two of them, regarding Romeo’s fate and Lord Capulet’s real plan for Juliet respectively.
