Daniel Bravo Hernández and Ra'Mya Latiah Aikens Photo by Joan Marcus

It's quite an intricate arrangement that director Saheem Ali has orchestrated about the tale of star-crossed lovers. Call it a theatrical fantasia on a theme by William Shakespeare. Even with modifications, the Bard's voice is never lost, but the production itself does get somewhat tangled in the weeds of a superimposed mise en scene.

No doubt, purists will balk at accepting the various tweaks and twists Ali has introduced, not the least of which is the bilingualism (English and Spanish liberally intermixed) that is being employed. Pero aunque no hables español, you'll have no trouble following the story, quite possibly the most widely taught Shakespeare play in high school classes across the country.

The buzz before the production opened was that Romeo and Juliet would be speaking Spanish to one another, while everyone else spoke English. As a concept, this made little sense to me, except to serve as a reminder that last summer Ali directed a production at the Delacorte of Twelfth Night, in which a pair of siblings, reunited after separately being washed ashore in a foreign land, spoke Swahili to one another. Now that sat well within the logic of the play itself; strangers in a strange land finding one another.

This time, however, the bilingual approach is being used for a different purpose, as you might experience it wherever there is a mingling of Spanish-speaking and English-speaking populations. Thus we find ourselves simultaneously in Shakespeare's "fair Verona" and in a place that has been dubbed in the opening prologue as "Nueva Verona," evidently somewhere along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. It is here that the performance unfolds before a tall border fence, which becomes the site of occasional bursts of protest actions and signage in English and in Spanish ("Defund the Wall" and "El Muro Mata"). To emphasize this sort of bilocation, images culled from Mexican myth and culture are employed in the design throughout.

LaChanze, Deirdre O'Connell, and Ra'Mya Latiah Aikens Photo by Joan Marcus

To begin with, Daniel Bravo Hernández and Ra'Mya Latiah Aikens as the titular couple are delightful. If you were to attend only for Act I, you would find yourself happily ensconced in an apparent rom-com, a celebration of young love. The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets is not overplayed but serves well to explain the exasperation of Prince Escalus (Jessica Pimentel) over the frequent outbursts that threaten the tranquility of the city. These quarrels and fights foreshadow the events in Act II that turn this into a tragedy.

But mostly, the focus is on Romeo and Juliet, just as you might envision them, played here for their innocent youthfulness and their headlong plunge into first love. Their allies are also sharply delineated. One is the Nurse, who, as portrayed by Deirdre O'Connell, comes off as less a bawdy secondary character and more of a significant nurturing one; when she abruptly shifts loyalties in Act II, it comes off as a shocker to both Juliet and to us.

Also allowed to shine in a new light is Friar Lawrence, who is often seen as a well-intentioned but generally hapless counselor to the pair. As played by Francis Jue, the good friar is a truly trusted and trustworthy support, who fails not due to faulty planning, but to the same fate or, really, to the human folly that brings everything crashing to the ground. In fact, the only hissable villain here is Juliet's father, Lord Capulet (Glenn Fleshler), whose obstinacy is as much to blame as anything for the tragic ending.

Other outstanding performances among the solid cast are given by LaChanze as Lady Capulet, Ariyan Kassam as the aggressive Tybalt, and Caleb Joshua Eberhardt as the mercurial Mercutio.

No matter the tinkering that has been done here, to quote another of Shakespeare's works, "the play's the thing" and it remains so. Whatever quibbles you might have about the imposition of the imagined "Nueva Verona," this is a lovingly directed and acted production of Romeo and Juliet. We may weep over the sad loss of the storied couple, but we are sent home on an upbeat note in which Francis Jue takes us into a celebratory postscript ending, perfect for a warm June evening under the stars.