Port Perry’s Theatre on the Ridge opens its 2026 summer season with a Romeo & Juliet that takes a confident artistic gamble: it lets music do more than decorate the drama. In director Iain Moggach and composer/music director Landon Doak’s adaptation, song and sound press on the lovers and the audience alike.
Performed in an open-air tent on the bucolic grounds of the Scugog Shores Museum and Village, the production pares Shakespeare’s tragedy to a lean, almost elemental shape. The approach is minimalist without feeling thin. Music and song are woven through the text as an expression of fate, while the actors underscore the action with rhythm, voice and instruments. The youthful production makes an old story feel tender, haunted and newly immediate.
One slight quibble. At times, the music overpowers the spoken text, making some dialogue difficult to catch. For those who know the story, the loss is manageable; for newcomers, it may briefly cloud the narrative.
That balance will likely settle as the run continues.
Doak’s original compositions are among the evening’s strongest assets, alternately calming and heightening the dramatic tension. In collaboration with Moggach and a committed ensemble, the score helps this pared-down Romeo & Juliet reach the heart without forcing sentiment.
It works beautifully.
The device recalls John Doyle’s New York revivals of Sweeney Todd and Company, in which actors doubled as the orchestra. Here, the comparison is useful because it similarly asks performers to carry story, atmosphere and sound at once.
A seven-person cast, with three taking on dual roles, tells the story with sensitivity and compassion. As the audience enters, the performers evoke travelling theatrical troubadours, greeting spectators and setting the scene through music. Under the tent, they become narrators as well as players, introducing the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets and the Prince’s warning, delivered by Shannon Pitre, that further violence will carry a deadly price.
Ben Ridd’s Romeo, lovesick for the unseen Rosaline, is urged by Benvolio (Hilary Wheeler) and Mercutio (Kieran Prouty) to look elsewhere. Their masked visit to the Capulet party sets the tragedy in motion. Meanwhile, Una Roulston’s Juliet, dutiful and composed, agrees to consider the older Paris (Prouty) in order to please her father, Capulet (Elm Reyes).
Fate, inevitably, intervenes. Romeo and Juliet meet; Tybalt (Michael Williamson) bristles at Romeo’s presence; and Capulet, in a telling moment of restraint, orders him to let the young Montague be.
By the balcony scene, the lovers’ impetuous certainty has begun its fatal work. Romeo seeks Friar Lawrence (Williamson), who recognizes youthful fickleness but sees in the proposed marriage a possible bridge between the warring households. From there, the production moves swiftly toward its tragic conclusion.
Moggach’s three-quarter-thrust set, framed by the open-air environment under the tent, reinforces the sense of a troupe arriving to tell an urgent old tale. The pre-show music has a bright, folk-inflected ease, at moments suggesting the melodic warmth of Steven Page and the wider Canadian pop-rock tradition, from Blue Rodeo to The Tragically Hip.
Under Moggach’s gentle, compassionate direction, the characters are not treated as villains so much as people trapped by immaturity, habit, pride and bad timing. That choice deepens the sadness. The catastrophe does not feel imposed; it accumulates.
Prouty is an actor to watch. His Mercutio, swaggering in tight jeans and boots, brings brash energy to the Queen Mab speech without losing the character’s danger. As Paris, he is more reserved, giving the suitor a credible sincerity. Williamson, meanwhile, moves effectively between a hot-headed Tybalt and a measured Friar Lawrence, whose final failure of judgment lands with painful consequence.
Pitre’s response to Juliet’s apparent death is a quietly humane moment. Reyes gives Capulet’s threat to disown Juliet a frightening force, while Wheeler’s Benvolio proves a smart casting choice, tempering the young men’s banter with a watchful, grounded presence.
As the star-crossed lovers, Ridd and Roulston capture youthful exuberance without slipping into sugary excess. Their scenes are clear, earnest and vulnerable. As Doak’s score darkens, helped by Prouty’s soulful bass violin, the music seems to suspend fate in the air around them.
In his programme note, Moggach writes that he hopes the music makes the play feel “more tender and more haunted.”
It does.
The live music gives this Romeo & Juliet its pulse and its ache, turning a familiar tragedy into a memorable time in the theatre.
Theatre on the Ridge’s Romeo & Juliet is well worth seeing.
Running time: approximately two hours and twenty minutes, with one intermission.
The production runs to July 5 at the Scugog Shores Museum and Village, 16210 Island Road, Port Perry. For tickets: theatreontheridge.ca or call (905) 242-9343.
THEATRE ON THE RIDGE presents
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
Adapted by Landon Doak and Iain Moggach
Director, Associate Producer and Co-choreographer: Iain Moggach
Composer and Music Director: Landon Doak
Music Captain: Michael Williamson
Co-Choreographer: Iain Moggach
Co-choreographer and ‘Queen Mab’ choreographer: Alea Carrington
Intimacy Coordinator: Alayna Kellett-Moloktow
Stage Manager: Alea Carrington
Stage Crew: Aaron Arculus, Eva Carroll and Alora Kotelo
Technical Operator: Alea Carrington
Set and Production Design: Iain Moggach
Set Construction: Alora Kotelo, Carey Nicholson, Andy Williamson
Costume/Props Coordination: Aaron Arculus, Alora Kotelo
Performers: Shannon Pitre, Kieran Prouty, Elm Reyes, Ben Ridd, Una Roulston, Hilary Wheeler, Michael Williamson
