Word: tybalt
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Zeffirelli makes them exuberantly violent. When Romeo and Tybalt square off for battle, they crouch like street fighters, foils in one hand, poniards in the other. None of that crossed-swords jazz. This is a rumble, man. In the turnabout of dramatic history, Romeo and Juliet has become, in a sense, an adaptation of West Side Story. It is probably one of the best productions ever given the play...
Nevertheless, by sheer theatrical intensity, the film transcends its specious materials. Under Robert Wise's driving direction, its set pieces are socko and incessant. Natalie Wood has the right dark glow as the Latin heroine; Richard Beymer is winsome as the hero, and as a tan teen Tybalt and a nubile Nurse of anything but the usual Shakespearance, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno are strikingly slummy. On-screen as onstage, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics sting like a tongueful of tamales. Leonard Bernstein's music, as usual spinelessly eclectic, fails (as the whole film fails) to merge...
...play is at times literarily self-conscious and structurally too obvious in its symmetrical balance. Every idea has its complement: love vs. hate, day vs. night, patience vs. impetuosity, chastity vs. bawdry, and so on. Every character has its foil: Romeo and Mercutio, Juliet and Roasline, Benvolio and Tybalt, Friar Laurence and the Nurse. If it is not a supreme achievement, it is still a great play; and let us be thankful we have...
...finest male performance in this production is Jack Bittner's Tybalt. He plays Capulet's war-mongering nephew with brio and brimstone. Though physically very short of stature, Bittner is, by the time he is slain, fully one foot taller. Incidentally, all the swordplay in the production is splendid; arranged by Raymond Saint-Jacques, it is a far cry from the usual mamby-pamby skirmishing...
...gentle narration of a voice in English, the plot thickens speedily; servants of the feuding Montagues and Capulets meet and taunt one another into a brawl that fills the square. Soon the entire cast is introduced: Romeo, handsome and brawny; Friend Mercutio, here a playboy with wonderfully impudent toes; Tybalt, an arrogant, bloodthirsty Capulet; the stony senior Capulets and Montagues; and, last and best, Ulanova's Juliet, not quite girlish and a bit plumper about the waist than the American fashion in dancers...