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Romeo and Juliet is an ideal gateway to the world of William Shakespeare for many a young theatergoer, and those wishing to inoculate wee ones early in the wonders of the Bard might do significantly worse than with Chicago Shakespeare’s 75-minute rendition of this much-loved tragedy.

In the last analysis, I find myself sympathetic to Shinn’s project. As DOMA goes to the Supreme Court and as states for the first time reject constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, insisting too stridently on inherited narratives of “queer victimhood” feels forced and disingenuous. Queer people—no longer uniformly marginalized to the closet—have an opportunity to recast themselves as committed agents of social change. The implications for queer storytelling are immense. Unfortunately, Teddy Ferrara doesn’t quite pick up on them.

Without Davenport serving as a much-needed emotional anchor, there is little to bring us into the story’s unfolding details. Even tensions between Davenport and the white Captain Charles Taylor (played by Tim Walsh with a Gomer Pyle-esque boobery) fail to elicit anything more than a few reactionary chuckles from the audience. Major plot points feel as though they’re mumbled through

American politicians are sold to us as though they were tubes of toothpaste, and Mr. Munby’s Cesar looks to be no different. But the whole thing feels a touch too ironic, too cheeky, as we soon suspect the image of Cesar—like that of all great American politicians—to be infinitely more impressive than the man himself. Yet if Brutus is to enact a genuine tragedy, then Cesar must be no less than he claims: “…constant as the northern star,/ Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality/ There is no fellow in the firmament.” After all, there is no hero’s dignity in slaying an upstart impostor.