Pocket Play Review: Bard on the Beach takes The Two Gentlemen of Verona back to the future

Review by Julie Hammonds, author of Blue Mountain Rose: A Novel in Five Acts, published by Soulstice Publishing.

• The Play: The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• Hot Quote: “They do not love that do not show their love.”  ~Julia
• The Company: Bard on the Beach, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• The Stage: An elaborate set in a walled circus tent, with a view of distant mountains and sky. The audience sits comfortably in padded chairs on risers, with excellent sightlines.
• Run Dates: June 13–September 19, 2025
• Memorable for: The ending, which I won’t spoil. I want to! But I won’t.
• With apologies to all the excellent human actors, the Scene-stealer Award goes to Mason the Dog (playing Crab), who yawned during Launce’s first long speech and brought the house down. I suspect dogs have been stealing this show since the first performance.

Pocket Play Review:

With a set splashed in bubblegum colors, costumes straight from the Jane Fonda Workout, and visual references to movies like Say Anything (1989), Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach delivers a joyful, nontraditional take on The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

A 1980s aesthetic infuses the production. Boom boxes pound out the Billboard Hot 100 circa 1985. The female leads, Julia and Sylvia, wear long, curly side ponytails that would make Madonna proud. The hilarious Scott Bellis plays Launce as Doc from Back to the Future.

This production delivered a 100 on the nostalgia-meter for people who remember the 1980s. It was pure fun to travel back to a time when belts were wide, shoulders were padded, balloon pants were on trend, and regular people wore leg warmers. I can’t say enough about Carmen Alatorre’s costume designs, which mixed punk, preppy, and romantic choices to convey the flavor of this decade.

The male leads, Proteus and Valentine, are teenagers on their first trip away from home. Love and loss, friendship and jealousy are in play, but the stakes seem low because unlike in other Shakespeare plays, these aren’t kings and queens. They’re just kids taking risks, disobeying their parents, and learning that we can hurt people we love with our words and actions.

Lead actors Jacob Leonard (Proteus) and Matthew Ip Shaw (Valentine) weren’t yet born when the 1980s ended, but they seemed right at home, acting with an ease that invited audience participation. A favorite moment came when the crowd booed Proteus’s evildoing. Leonard gave us a taunting smile as if asking, “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it?”

A theme like this gives the audience a way into Shakespeare’s ideas and plenty to talk about afterward. The biggest alteration this production makes to Shakespeare’s story comes at the end. As written, the play famously quits giving lines to the female leads, Julia (a charmingly soulful Tess Degenstein) and Sylvia (winningly played by Agnes Tong). As their fates are decided by men, they have no say, no voice.

This production worked around that, using a conceit devised by none other than Scott Bellis (then directing) in 2017. The new resolution honors the agency of the play’s female characters. I won’t spoil it, but I will say that this audience leapt to its feet and cheered.

Although we were cheering an ending Shakespeare didn’t imagine, I appreciated the connection I felt with everyone in the house, actors and audience alike, in that moment of bliss and catharsis. It felt Shakespearean in spirit.

In sum: Bard on the Beach modernizes Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona with affection and creativity, revisiting the famously unsatisfying ending to give a modern audience reason to cheer.

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You might think that as an author who invented a traditional outdoor stage for my Blue Mountain Rose Theatre Company, I must be a traditionalist. Surely I turn up my nose when a company changes Shakespeare’s text or story.

On the contrary: I think the Bard’s work still speaks to us, in part, because theater companies do creative work to bridge his time and ours. If I’m a traditionalist, this is the tradition I support. Shakespeare cared about telling the story and entertaining people, and this production does both.

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Wherever you are, there’s probably a Shakespeare festival going on nearby. Summer is the time to see shows outdoors in the United States and Canada. Go, find a play and take part in this grand tradition.

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Author Julie Hammonds is on a quest to complete Shakespeare’s canon in calendar year 2025. In these pocket play reviews, she records brief impressions of each show she sees. Her love for live theater is evident on every page of Blue Mountain Rose. Learn more about the book at our home page.