Shakespeare for the jet set

ROMEO AND JULIET

Featuring Chloë Peterson, Philip Pace, Philip Graeme, Sara Wood. Written by William Shakespeare. Producer Ben Kanter. Stage Manager Laurier Harrison. Directed by Simon Rice. To Aug. 21. $12. Alumnae Theatre, 70 Berkeley. 870-8000. ***

Anyone who's had trouble with Shakespeare's language (just about everyone, at one point or another) knows the drill. Hear the lines spoken mechanically, as if memorized, and their sense can completely escape you. But hear them spoken knowingly, with full muscle and intention, and the meaning emerges clearly from the apparent fog of 16th-century idiom.

Both approaches can be seen in abundance in a new, shortened, modernized Romeo and Juliet, which plays through Saturday in a just-past-student production at Alumnae Theatre.

One of the compensations you get for hanging in with very green theatre talent is that you occasionally run into something new. For a while, Bloody Theatre's Romeo and Juliet promises some real payoff on this front. What the opening fight sequence lacks in polish it gains in energy -- set to the drums and wails of "Sing, Sing, Sing" and ambitiously choreographed by Nicole Piller and Todd Campbell. Likewise, the unconventional entrances of the principals -- a dungareed Romeo riding in on a Schwinn, Juliet on roller skates, Lady Capulet in a lawnchair sporting a martini and a Bill Blass sunhat -- suggest something more than a jazz-scored rehash of the DiCaprio-Claire Danes film version.

One of the first decisions director Simon Rice should have made in his otherwise laudable stab at directing Shakespeare is to take himself off the stage. His hangdog Benvolio is several rungs below the periodically overmatched leads, and he's badly out-of-depth in scenes with Philip Graeme -- whose energetic, intelligent Mercutio (he nailed the difficult "Queen Mab" speech, for example) is the highlight of this production.

Like most young performers, leads Philip Pace and Chloë Peterson tend to do too much, especially when a soliloquy requires them to carry a scene; the work of both peaks in scenes that allow them to play off each other. Peterson's shriek when Pace emerges from the bushes cuts through the improbable elements of the balcony scene and their handling of the lovers' first meeting (complete with tango sequence) carries plenty of charm and some palpable heat.

Pace plays Romeo too fey in the boisterous male-bonding scenes and while her delivery is a clearly less studied, it's Peterson's Juliet who's the more convincing -- proving, perhaps, that emotional conviction still stands for something in a performance.

Given the inexperience of most involved, it doesn't seem helpful to dwell on the inadequacies of their supporting cast. (Let's just say that in some scenes there's enough wood propped up onstage to build a small bungalow.) The finale of Bloody Theatre's version falls well short of true tragic catharsis. But it at least makes you feel sorry for the overheated, largely guiltless teens, and in this context, that warrants more than a passing grade. -- KEVIN CONNOLLY

Photo: Camille Harrison