Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet comes to New Swan Shakespeare Festival in Irvine, California, through a Dust Bowl frame, placing Shakespeare's story of young love inside a landscape marked by scarcity, heat, migration, and pressure. In that setting, public conflict and private tenderness feel inseparable; the world around the lovers is already unstable before their choices begin to change it.

Directed by Rachael VanWormer, the production gives the familiar tragedy a visual field where romance, family allegiance, humor, and violence can all live under the open air of the New Swan space. The scenic work can lean into dust, exposed structure, and social compression, creating a place where hope appears fragile because the environment itself seems to be asking people to harden.