Romeo & Juliet ran from May 22 through June 28, 2026 at the Delacorte Theater.
By Elazar Abrahams
There is a baseline joy to sitting in the Delacorte Theater on a summer night that almost feels critic-proof. Central Park, free top-quality Shakespeare, and the communal ritual of it all. But the production itself has to matter too, and the Public Theater’s new take on Romeo & Juliet never quite sold audiences on spending three hours taking it in.
Directed by Saheem Ali, this production marked the iconic play’s first Shakespeare in the Park staging in almost 20 years. The show sets the story in a border-town “Nueva Verona,” with Daniel Bravo Hernández as Romeo and Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens as Juliet, and while the play largely unfolds in the old Shakespearean English one might be accustomed to, when the lovers speak to each other, the dialogue is in Spanish. The set too, invokes the USA-Mexico border wall, and implies the Montagues and Capulets are torn apart by ideology on immigration and other politics.
These ideas are not automatically bad ones. And Shakespeare’s works can only survive and thrive through bold reinterpretations that keep them fresh. But here, the political lens feels grafted on to the play for easy applause rather than being organically drawn out of it. Scenes of spray painting anti-ICE sentiment just come off as cringe, even if the intent might be noble.
What works best are the “boys.” The production really understands that Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, and the rest of that social world should feel like young men egging each other on, joking too hard, performing masculinity for each other, and mistaking recklessness for loyalty. Caleb Joshua Eberhardt’s Mercutio and Okieriete Onaodowan’s Benvolio help give those scenes an actual charge, and when the production leans into that rowdy friend-group energy, it briefly finds the pulse it keeps losing elsewhere.
There are other strong performances too. Deirdre O’Connell brings real texture to the Nurse, Francis Jue gives Friar Laurence an appealing presence, and the supporting cast often finds more specificity than the concept gives them. The famous balcony scene also works better than much of what surrounds it. Even if I never fully bought the chemistry between Romeo and Juliet, that scene has enough beauty and clarity to remind you why this play remains basically indestructible. This section is also where the slipping back and forth between English and Spanish is most exciting and well done.
But too many of the important scenes are mishandled. The party and masquerade scene, which should feel intoxicating and dangerous, never really lifts off. Mercutio’s death, one of the great tonal pivots in all of Shakespeare, lands with a shrug. And the final tomb scene, Act 5 Scene 3, is fatal in the wrong way. You can survive a lot of blandness in a Romeo & Juliet production if the ending devastates. This one doesn’t. It lacks punch. It should instead make the audience feel like the air has left the room.
Most performances also concluded with a real wedding. No shade to those lovely couples who chose to get married after each curtain call, but this specific run was not good enough to have your nuptials at.
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