R+J at the Teatro SEA in the L.E.S.

I'm not a city girl, so when I go into the City (NYC) it's a big, scary deal. Luckily I had some help this past Sunday. My high schoolf riend Katie met me at New York Penn Station and ushered me through the hot and crowded subway system until we reached the Lower East Side.

We had brunch at Macondo where I had seasame seeds on my chicken enchiladas in mole sauce for the first time. I think I'm going to try that one at home. We also had overpriced (for me) sangria, which was tastey. The portion was atrociously small, however, and not one block over I helped myself to some honey lavendar gelato from a cold, severe/austere looking gelato place. I didn't like the atmosphere of this shop, but the gelato was rather yummy.

But food alone isn't enough to bring me into the City. My friend Kyra Corradin is performing in a play for NYC Fringe Fest - Romeo + Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending. They performed it first in the Capitol Fringe Fest in 2010, and won best Comedy and Best Overall. So they were invited up here to the NYC Fringe Fest. And the production did not disappoint.

The male lead, James Waters, was a charming and convincing Romeo. Kyra herself was quirky and a delight to watch as Juliet ("I'm marrying a stranger!"), and Katie Jeffries was a convincingly shrewish blend of Beatrice and Catherine as Rosaline. In fact, the entire crew was fun to watch on stage. It was apparent from the beginning that here was a bunch of young actors who enjoyed being with each other, and they enjoyed being with each other in this play.

The interludes while the set changed was filled with orchestra, and dare I say it perhaps cello, renditions of familiar songs, including I Believe In a Thing Called Love by The Darkness. The theater itself was small and cosy, the seats benches padded in red velvet, and the colors primary and coordinating. Visually and auraly, this was a rich and upbeat play.

The choosing comes in three times during the play. Romeo takes the audience aside while his fellowp layers remain motionless behind him. He asks the audience to make decisions for him. The first, for example, is whether or not he should remain true to Rosaline or pursue the beautiful woman he saw from afar and doesn't know the name of (Juliet, we assume).

Should the audience select Rosaline, she disappearsc ompletely from the show and Jeffries portrays the Friar for the duration of the play as it follows along more closely with the original. Our audience decided to let Romeo stay true to Rosaline, and from there it branched out with the guidence of co-writers Ann and Shawn Fraistat in a way that Shakespeare himself would have found believable. Except for the modern cursing, which I'ms ure he would have taken in stride.

So there is cursing and a number of sexual innuendos, but that as the way it was written in the first place, and in an era of short attention spans and customizable cars, this just seems like the natural modernization of Shakespeare's own style.

They have one more show before the Fringe Fest ends, next Sunday, August 28th. Go ahead and google it; you won't be disappointed.