Riverside Shakespeare Company - Riverside Shakespeare Tours Produced By Joseph Papp - Romeo and Juliet On The Mobile Stage

Romeo and Juliet On The Mobile Stage

The next summer, in 1984, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted a summer parks tour of its third production of Romeo and Juliet directed by John Clingerman with music by Michael Roth played by percussionist David Nicholson, fight choreography by Robert Walsh, on a set designed by Kevin Lee Allen and costumes by Cecilia A. Frederichs, with Michael Golding, Constance Boardman, Saul Stein, Todd Jamieson and Jeff Shoemaker.

For this production, the company secured $15,000 from New York Telephone to overhaul the mobile stage that been used by the New York Shakespeare Festival for parks tours before the NYSF stopped touring four years before. According to Newsday:

The 35-foot (11 m) long unit resembles a commercial vehicle that might transport a large household across the country. It takes six stagehands using hydraulic lift and plenty of muscle, several hours to rig the contents into the Verona of Shakespeare's love-stricken youth.... "It's sunset Shakespeare", said W. Stuart McDowell, the Riverside's artistic director, "designed to be performed in natural light the way it was in Shakespeare's time."

The production opened at the Bandshell in New York's Central Park to an audience estimated at over a thousand (according to Newsday). This was the first time Riverside Shakespeare Company had ventured into New York's Central Park – the traditional territory of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Opening on June 6, 1984 saw a "Gala Benefit" hosted by Lucille Lortel, Richard Horner and Lynne Stuart. Opening night, Joseph Papp joined W. Stuart McDowell on the touring stage, and inaugurated the five borough tour in a special ceremony in which Mr. Papp compared Riverside's tour with the former tours of the NYSF:

They're a marvelous bunch of actors. And they have what it takes for this sort of thing—They carry things on their backs...We used to make deals with local gangs. One time I remember well. I told this kid that he had to move because he was backstage. He said to me, "This ain't backstage; it's first base!"

The old mobile unit could not withstand the rigors of a month-long, outdoor tour of transporting "fair Verona" to the five boroughs of New York City. The second weekend, the 35-foot (11 m) long mobile unit dropped its rear axle at the intersection of 42nd and 9th while the truck was crossing midtown Manhattan. The mobile unit had to be permanently retired, but the tour continued with select pieces of scenery, such as Juliet's balcony, and the production continued to play to exceptionally large audiences across the five boroughs.