DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ESCALUS, Prince of the County; a man wearing a sash of yellow caution tape draped over a dusty tuxedo. He enjoys the echoes of his own voice in empty rooms and believes that issuing a sternly worded memo can stop a blood feud.
PARIS, a young nobleman; he drives a leased luxury SUV with low-profile tires that are absolutely useless on a dirt road. He smells of expensive cologne and desperation, and he is currently being ghosted by Juliet in favor of a theoretical mime troupe in Montreal.
MONTAGUE & CAPULET, heads of two houses at variance with each other; they are "Philosopher Kings" of the backwoods. They spend their days on sagging porch swings, debating the Kantian ethics of property lines while their respective properties are being reclaimed by the forest. They cannot find their own shoes without a map.
ROMEO, son to Montague; a "scholar" who wears a hunting-orange fedora and a trench coat in mid-July. He views his own existence as a high-concept indie film and believes that sighing loudly in public is a substitute for having a job or a personality.
MERCUTIO, kinsman to the Prince, and friend to Romeo; a "wit" who considers himself a master of satire. He spends most of his time dueling inanimate objects—mostly pine trees and mailboxes—and refuses to speak in anything other than complex cheese metaphors and aggressive, multi-layered puns.
BENVOLIO, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo; a "Master Strategist" who has managed to get his thumb permanently lodged in a beer can. He carries a compass that points exclusively toward the nearest liquor store and moves his lips when he reads a stop sign.
TYBALT, nephew to Lady Capulet; a "Master of Arms" who has fashioned a suit of plate armor entirely out of flattened, industrial-sized beer cans. He has the spatial awareness of a drunk moose on a frozen pond and views every minor inconvenience as a personal insult to his "honor."
FRIAR LAWRENCE, a Franciscan; a "Holy Sage" who lives in a lean-to shed behind a scrap yard. He believes he is a master of the ancient arts because he once successfully fermented moonshine out of poison ivy and watches 240p botany tutorials on mute.
PETER, a handyman; THE SMART ONE. He is the only person in the county who knows how to locate a septic tank, bleed a brake line, or change a tire. He possesses a terrifyingly high level of common sense and zero patience for "thematic resonance."
JULIET, daughter to Capulet; an heiress to a scrap-metal fortune who reads Quantum Existentialism upside down. She wears thrift-store lace and combat boots, hoping that if she looks miserable enough, someone will mistake it for depth.
THE NURSE, to Juliet; THE OTHER SMART ONE. She fixes heavy machinery with duct tape and sheer willpower. She breathes more tobacco smoke than oxygen and is currently betting the monthly rent on the black bears finally eating the Capulet family.
LADY MONTAGUE & LADY CAPULET, wives to the two houses; weary, battle-hardened women who have strategically barricaded themselves in their respective guest houses to avoid listening to their husbands' four-hour monologues on "the nature of the soul."
CITIZENS OF VERONA (THE BUSH); a chaotic swarm consisting of black flies, confused tourists looking for a hiking trail, and local residents who are just trying to figure out why the tool shed is on fire for the third time this week.
The Tragedy of the Muddy Veranda
A Sarcastic, Gritty, and Highly Unnecessary Retelling
In the mosquito-choked, humidity-drenched reality of the northern Canadian woods, evolution hasn’t stopped—it’s just taken a weirdly lateral, drunken turn into a ditch. In this specific ecosystem, the "nobility" are basically high-functioning toddlers in expensive Gore-Tex. They operate under the delusion that quoting Nietzsche or Schopenhauer makes them immune to the basic laws of physics, biology, and gravity.
Meanwhile, the local laborers—the people traditionally cast as "clowns" or "servants"—are the only creatures in the forest with a functioning prefrontal cortex. They spend their days watching the "elites" stumble into traps and set themselves on fire, looking on with the tired, thousand-yard stare of a parent watching a toddler play with a beehive.
Act I: The Balcony (Or, The Rotting Cedar Deck)
The play opens not in a sun-lit Italian plaza filled with marble statues, but on a veranda held together by rust, black mold, and the stubborn refusal of the wood to finish rotting. The air is thick with the scent of damp pine needles and the distant, lonely sound of a screen door hitting its frame. Romeo, standing ankle-deep in a patch of stinging nettles and burdock, stares up at Juliet, who is draped over a railing that hasn't seen a coat of stain since the Mulroney administration.
ROMEO: (Adjusting his orange fedora) Behold! What light through yonder dirty window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! If the sun were a chain-smoking heiress with a personality like wet plywood and a collection of expensive, unread books that she uses as coasters!
JULIET: (Not looking up from her book) O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Specifically, why are you standing in a patch of poison ivy while wearing shorts? Deny thy father and refuse thy name—mostly because your father is currently trying to fight a lawn mower—or at least change your socks. They smell like a stagnant bog that’s been baking in the July heat since the mid-nineties.
PETER THE HANDYMAN: (Leaning on a rusty shovel, his face smeared with axle grease) Look, Romeo, stop reciting bad poetry to a girl who thinks "The Sun" is a brand of lemon-scented dish soap. If you actually want to see her, just use the stairs. The front door is unlocked because her dad is passed out in a lawn chair with a half-eaten burger on his chest. Even the local coyotes think you're too pathetic to be considered prey. Move, you're blocking the light; I'm trying to see if this support beam is structurally sound. Spoiler: It isn't.
Act II: The Duel (The Gravel Pit Ego-Trip)
The action shifts to the local gravel pit, a desolate landscape of grey dust, discarded tires, and a broken-down 1984 Ford F-150. While the "intellectuals" debate the moral high ground and the subjective nature of violence, Tybalt arrives, clanking loudly in his beer-can armor. He looks like a cyborg built by a frat house.
TYBALT: Prepare to be intellectually dismantled, Romeo! You haven’t cited your sources in the local newsletter for three consecutive weeks! You are a fraud, a charlatan, and you probably buy store-bought kindling like a city-dweller! I challenge you to a debate of the highest order, or I shall be forced to poke you with this sharpened stick!
MERCUTIO: (Waving a neon-blue pool noodle with theatrical flair) I strike! I parry! Death is but a metaphor for a poorly timed nap in a drafty hallway! Tybalt, you rat-catcher, you king of cats! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of... wait, I’ve used that line before. Your soul is as hollow as a Swiss cheese, and twice as smelly!
(Tybalt lunges, loses his footing on a rogue pinecone, and accidentally pokes Mercutio in the eye with a sprig of hemlock he was using as a decorative boutonnière to symbolize his connection to the earth.)
PETER: (Watching from the cab of a rusted-out bulldozer) He’s not dead, he just needs an ice pack and a heavy dose of reality. Tybalt, go home before you trip on your own ego and break a hip. I'm trying to level this driveway so we can actually get the mail, and your "theatrical tragedy" is getting in the way of my hourly rate. Go play in the traffic; it’s more productive.
Act III: The Plan (Botany for Idiots and Arsonists)
Desperate to stay relevant in a world that is slowly moving toward common sense, Friar Lawrence sits in his lean-to shed. He is surrounded by half-dead ferns, empty jugs of antifreeze, and a collection of "vintage" (read: broken) typewriters. He concocts a plan so needlessly complex it requires a complete suspension of disbelief and a degree in advanced stupidity to follow.
FRIAR LAWRENCE: Juliet! My vast knowledge of botany—learned entirely from a 240p YouTube video with the sound off while I was halfway through a bottle of rye—has provided a solution! Take this vial. It contains industrial-strength sedative, some leftover energy drink, and flat ginger ale. You shall appear dead for forty-two hours! It’s a perfect window for a philosophical rebirth and a dramatic exit from your social obligations!
THE NURSE: (Exhaling a thick, grey cloud of tobacco smoke while tightening a bolt on a generator that sounds like a bag of nails in a blender) Don't drink that, kid. It’s got a "Do Not Consume" label written in Sharpie on the bottom that he tried to lick off because he thought it was a "secret symbol." Juliet, if you want to avoid marrying that SUV-driving dork Paris, just tell him you’re moving to Montreal to join an experimental, non-verbal mime troupe. He’ll never call you again. He’s terrified of silence and people who don't laugh at his jokes. This "potion" is just going to give you a headache and a very weird afternoon.
Act IV: The Finale (The Chemical Mosh Pit)
The narrative climaxes in a crumbling stone cellar that was originally designed to be a wine cellar but ended up as a storage unit for broken lawnmowers and damp cardboard boxes. Romeo arrives, finds Juliet in a sugar-crash coma, and decides the only logical response is to commit a dramatic exit using a bottle of wood stripper he found in the Friar’s shed.
ROMEO: Oh, malicious fate! To find my love thus—laid out on a slab of damp limestone like a discarded ham at a clearance sale! My vast, philosophic mind cannot process this ontological void! The universe is a cold, dark room and I have lost my flashlight! I shall consume this dark elixir—which smells faintly of turpentine—and join her in the great, dusty library of the afterlife!
(He drinks. It tastes like burning tires and deep, structural regret. He falls over a bucket of gravel, his body twitching rhythmically while his orange fedora rolls into a puddle of stagnant water.)
JULIET: (Waking up, rubbing her eyes, and coughing) Hark! Why is the guy in the orange hat vibrating next to my feet? Romeo? Is this a performance piece on the futility of the patriarchy, or did you just find the stash of bad moonshine? You look like you're trying to vibrate into another dimension.
PETER: (Entering with a flashlight and a heavy-duty mop) Move aside, "Professor." You’re standing in a puddle of your own genius. Romeo over there didn't check the label. He’s not dying of a broken heart; he’s dying of stupidity and a perforated esophagus. The wood stripper is doing exactly what it was designed to do—removing the finish. Unfortunately, he was the finish.
JULIET: (Grabbing Romeo’s decorative dagger) Then I shall join him! Observe my commitment to the bit! My pain is a tectonic shift in the soul, a rupture in the fabric of being!
(She tries to stab herself, but the dagger is a prop made of painted foam from a community theatre production. It just squeaks against her ribs with a pathetic, rubbery sound.)
JULIET: (Stabbing herself repeatedly) Why! Won't! I! Cease! To! Exist!
Act V: The Epilogue (The Exit Strategy)
As Prince Escalus arrives, tripping over his own caution-tape sash and trying to look "statesman-like" while covered in black flies, he prepares to deliver a lecture on morality that literally no one asked for.
PRINCE ESCALUS: See what a scourge is laid upon your hate! The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head! The very trees weep for this tragedy! Also, who is going to pay for the damage to the stone cellar? The drywall is ruined, there's wood stripper on the floor, and I’m pretty sure someone stole my hubcaps while I was giving this speech!
PETER: (Loading the last of his heavy-duty tools into the back of his rust-bucket truck, which is currently held together by bumper stickers and spite) Look, "Prince," it’s simple: two kids played with chemicals they didn't understand because they thought it looked "poetic," and three "geniuses" gave them bad advice. This isn't a tragedy; it’s a failure of the education system. We're going to the lake. The fish are biting, and unlike you lot, they don't quote Petrarch before they get on the hook.
THE NURSE: (Starting the engine with a roar that smells like burnt oil and freedom) For never was a story of more woe... than a bunch of "smart" people with too much ego, too much spare time, and not enough snow tires to make it through a basic Canadian winter. If you need us, don't call. We're retiring from this circus.
[EXEUNT THE TRUCK. THE CLOWNS REMAIN IN THE MUD, DEBATING THE SEMANTICS OF THEIR OWN EXTINCTION WHILE THE BLACK FLIES BEGIN TO CIRCLE THE ORANGE FEDORA.]
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