Ellen was right

I was in New York last week for the current iteration of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, this one starring the strikingly handsome Orlando Bloom and the equally lovely Condola Rashad. Ben Brantley’s review in the New York Times called Bloom’s performance a “first-rate Broadway debut.” About Rashad he writes, “Good as she is in the early scenes, Ms. Rashad doesn’t yet have the vocal heft and variety to take Juliet into the echoing halls of tragedy.”

I would say that about Orlando Bloom as well and, in fact, about the production as a whole. There were pretty people to look at, there were intriguing pyrotechnics to wonder at and there was a general ability to deliver Shakespeare’s words and cadences well enough – there just wasn’t much emotion on that stage, in perhaps the most emotional of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

This is not, however, a review. For that I would need to have seen the entire play and, I’m sorry, but I bailed just after the morning scene. (It was the nightingale, and not the lark / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear). I wasn't willing to have my love of tragedy dashed in the tomb scene. (Eyes, look your last; arms, take your last embrace…).

Leaving the theatre I knew what I would do as soon as I had a free night. That turned out to be last night, when I settled in for a thoroughly enjoyable two hours and eighteen minutes watching Franco Zeffirelli’s BRILLIANT 1968 interpretation of R&J. I cried when I first saw it in the movie theatre all those years ago, I have often cried listening to the soundtrack, and yes, I cried last night.

Why is that? It’s not like I don’t know how it ends. It’s not like it’s REAL – I know it’s a film, a film based on a play. It’s not even that I relate to it personally; luckily I've never had to make the kind of choices this doomed pair faces.

It’s that it’s emotional, and I have come to realize I am an emotion junkie. Some people play up-tempo, happy music when they’re sad, to climb out of that hole. Me, I milk the mood, revel in the feelings and revisit the pain. And it has nothing to do with my overall feeling about my life. Bitch though I do, I am ecstatic about my life: I have the best possible husband, three wonderful dogs, a great house and a thoroughly enjoyable job.

But another thing I have was identified by my friend Ellen all the way back in high school. She meant it as a compliment – and I took it as one – when she said, “Walt, you have the feelings of a girl.” I’m now Walter and I’m now a man – and I’d trust the feelings of a woman over a man’s any day.