Romeo and Juliet

Just when you got used to actors playing multiple roles in Angels in America, along comes a five-actor Shakespearean troupe known as the "Actors from the London Stage," or ACTER, with a casting scheme for Romeo and Juliet that will knock your socks off. See Romeo (Patrick Miller) play his own mother, and the Nurse (Ann Firbank) advise Juliet to cut her losses and marry Paris (Firbank again). And if Romeo thinks that the apothecary from whom he is buying poison looks familiar, it's because he/she is played by the same actor who plays Juliet (Jane Arden). Using only a few chairs, fewer props and a square patch of stage, the ACTER productions are always imaginative, always illuminating and often vastly entertaining.

Wed. Nov. 15, Fri. Nov. 17, Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., 898-6791.

-- Cary M. Mazer