Chase Park Theater

The stage is small and so is the audience space. The actors for romeo and juliet were awesome. All those lines by shakespeare they learned holy appraisal to them rehearsing that stuff. I laughed hard I cried hard. This romeo and juliet play was fun and long. It was magically majestic. Beautifully performed. Colorful and creative. Wildly entertaining. Thank god for this friday night walk in the park date. Living around the corner to this theater park is a real impressive place to be. The actors were out of this world brilliant in their acts.

A friend invited me to a show at Chase Park Theater. Community theater? I wasn’t enthused. The show was Romeo and Juliet no less. The whole bike ride there I was trying to think of things I could say after the show to look on the bright side, fully expecting to feel as if I had just wasted two precious hours of my life. However, I could not have been more wrong. The play was a delight! The staging and direction was really well done. It was a HUGE risk to update the play with modern costumes and settings, while retaining the certain authentic aspects (most notably the weaponry). The risk payed off! The play was sophisticated and yet accessible to a much wider audience. The actors were very diverse and represented the whole community. Some were really fantastic (I’m talking to you Romeo, Juliet, Benvolio, Tybalt, Mercutio.). Among them were recent theater grads from DePaul and other respectable programs. From the opening scene I was really impressed with the high quality of acting (Gregory and Sampson nailed it!). The fight choreography was intricate and fun to watch. I’m not saying this play was perfect, but it was really, really good and worth way more than the cost of admission. I look forward to seeing what Chase Park Theater is putting on in the future.