Bain & Bernard Comedy has cooked up one helluva theatrical mashup for Toronto Fringe with its production of Matt Bernard’s Romeo and Juliet Chainsaw Massacre, directed by Bernard and running to packed houses at the Randolph Theatre.
Inspired by a variety of horror films throughout the decades, particularly The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream and The Tower of London, we find Romeo and Juliet’s Verona under advisement (via 1950s radio-style broadcasts) that a deranged killer is on the loose after escaping from a local asylum. Dialogue from Romeo and Juliet is combined with modern language to great comic effect, and all hilarious hell breaks loose during the campy fun scenes of stalking and dismemberment.
The kick-ass ensemble has excellent comic timing, and does an amazing job with the hybrid language, chainsaw mayhem SFX and fight scenes. Stand-outs include Sarite Harris’s feisty Nurse; Michael Iliadis’s dramatic Mercutio; Brittany Kay’s sassy Juliet; Jeremy Lapalme’s saucy Peter the Illiterate Servant; Victor Pokinko’s slapdash Benvolio; Nicolas Porteous’s serious, misunderstood Romeo; and Scott Garland’s cocky, sleazy County Paris.
All the key plot points of an abbreviated Romeo and Juliet plus the over-the-top gruesome fun of horror schlock. What more could you ask for?
Star-crossed lovers! Codpieces! Chainsaws! A most outrageously funny Shakespeare/horror film mashup in Romeo and Juliet Chainsaw Massacre.
Romeo and Juliet Chainsaw Massacre continues at the Randolph Theatre until July 10; get your tickets in advance for this one, kids, these guys are packing them in there. For ticket info and advance tickets/passes, check out the Fringe website.
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