'Romeo & Juliet' is a visual delight

“Romeo & Juliet” took over The Barnacle this past week. For three nights, hundreds of people came out for free Shakespeare in the Park.

The Florida Shakespeare Theater, Founding Artistic Director Colleen Stovall, said this year’s professional production was not only true to the original script, “but it was an absolute visual delight, with detailed authentic costumes of the colorful and flourishing Italian period in the city-state of Verona.”

The difference this year from previous years is that the house and patio were used as the stage, rather than an actual stage, which in previous years was set up at the water's edge at the opposite end of the park. This added a lot more reality to the production. The house was a perfect backdrop and the upstairs veranda was almost made for Juliet's balcony.

Fans brought blankets and lawn chairs and set up close to the stage. It was a cozy set-up.

“We were thrilled to learn that so many families in attendance were totally new to our Shakespeare in the Park experience,” Stovall continued. “And there’s no better first-time production to see than Romeo & Juliet.”

It was almost a homecoming to The Barnacle because in the early 1890s, the Munroe family, who lived at The Barnacle, regularly hosted amateur Shakespeare plays among themselves and their friends – on the very veranda where this year's production was held.

The Barnacle was built in 1891 by Ralph Middleton Munroe, who founded the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club and held the position of Commodore there for 22 years.

Situated on the shore of the bay, this was Munroe’s home, whose principal passion was designing yachts. As a seaman, civic activist, naturalist, and photographer, Commodore Munroe cherished the natural world around him – and in fact possessed a sizable library of Shakespeare’s plays in the library of the estate.

Photos by Bill Kress