As a fitting tribute to Valentine's Day, Masters of Fine Arts acting students Sarah Elizabeth Bedard and Eddie Shields were hard at work performing one of the most popular love stories in the western canon: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The play premiered on the evening of Feb. 14 and ran through Sunday, Feb. 16 in Spingold Theater Center's coziest venue, Merrick Theater.

The play was not what traditional viewers of Shakespearean performances would expect of Romeo and Juliet; Bedard and Shields adapted the classic story to create their very own original performance, Romeo Loves Juliet.

Bedard and Shields' adaptation lasted just over an hour, vastly shorter than the original play. Romeo Loves Juliet was substantial enough to tell the story of the young star-crossed lovers, but not so long that audiences were pawing at their programs to find out when intermission would be. The duo took much liberty with the visual presentation of the play, leading to a dramatically stripped-down version as the final product, similar to the feeling of a spontaneous production.

The theater, a small, stark white space, was staged so that the actors were really the most lively part of the production: the neatly-seated, packed audience faced a construction-themed set. Three tall ladders were positioned on the stage and draped with ropes and fabric, staged to represent the appearance of tents. Indeed, the ladders did, in certain scenes, represent the homes of the Capulets and Montagues.

After a soothing riff of a singer-songwriter style ballad played to usher the audience in, Bedard and Shields began their performance from the first scenes of the original play. Since Romeo Loves Juliet is an adapted and also truncated version of the original production, Bedard and Shields selected certain scenes to perform so that the plot would not be compromised and the audience could still understand and be intrigued by the quickly-moving storyline.

Additionally, because Bedard and Shields were the only two actors in the performance, when either one of them was playing a character other than Romeo or Juliet, they would take turns wearing a masquerade-style eye mask. This limitation meant that either Romeo or Juliet had to be present in every scene, restricting the types of scenes that could be included.

However, this also caused the audience to pay more critical attention to the performance as they tried to ascertain the changing identity of the masked character. Though the actors did their best, this bold move did make it difficult for me to keep up during some of the shorter, more rapidly-transitioned scenes.

Bedard and Shields' interpretation of the famous balcony scene between Romeo and Juliet was one of the highlights of the production. A spotlight shone upon Bedard, who sat on the balcony of Merrick Theater, strumming a guitar and singing of her love for Romeo, while Shields scaled one of the quite haphazard-looking ladders, that was connected to the balcony by a "rope" made of sheets tied together.

I found that this scene was performed in a lively fashion, genuinely enhancing my understanding of how the original script was intended to be performed. Romeo and Juliet here were really a couple of love-blinded teenagers, and in turn, Bedard and Shields portrayed them with a wonderful hilarity.

Shields scaled up and down the ladder in contemplation before he boldly called out to Bedard, and as the two characters shared their first precious conversation as their true identities, Shields played Romeo with an emotional engagement that caused him to almost fall off of the ladder more than once. As an audience member, I was engaged, laughing and even worried for Shields' safety for those split-seconds as Romeo lost his balance out of sheer excitement.

While undertaking an adaptation of any production as popular as Romeo and Juliet always comes with due risk, the dramatic changes that Bedard and Shields made in their performance were supported by their delightful emotional engagement with their characters. The audience left the theater, sharing heart-warming laughs following the success of this production.