by Marty Green ·
Friday, April 10, 2026
Lily Narbonne. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
In an era of movies on television and videos on cellphones, seeing a live theater performance is an exciting reminder of how audiences first experienced Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Ninth- and 10th-graders at the Bromfield School had that experience on Friday afternoon, March 27, thanks to a grant of $2,400 from the PTO for which English teachers Emily Verrochi and Peter Murphy had applied.
Bromfield alumna Lily Narbonne and her husband, Justin Genna, are the owners and artistic directors of the Lanes Coven Theater Company, which is based in Gloucester and presents Shakespeare and other classic plays in the area. The plays are adapted for a range of venues, indoors or outdoors, in schools, libraries, and other settings.
As Bromfield students took their seats in the front half of the Cronin Auditorium, Narbonne introduced the play. She alerted them that laughter and fast action were also part of “Romeo and Juliet,” despite its reputation as tragedy. “It really is a comedy, until you-know-who dies!” she said. And indeed, the play began with a cheerful dance number.
Because Lanes Coven presents its performances in a variety of settings, the cast and crew must be adaptable. For scenery at Bromfield, the troupe used the basic parts of the school’s recent set for “Mamma Mia.” Fortunately, that set included a balcony for the crucial scene in which Romeo and Juliet first realize their love.
The Cronin stage also proved big enough to accommodate several extremely athletic fight scenes. The fights were quite convincing, especially the one in which Tybalt is killed, even though the audience had to imagine the actors were holding swords instead of the short, thick wooden sticks used for safety.
To fit with school schedules, the play itself had been condensed to 75 minutes, from a usual run
time closer to two hours. But Shakespeare’s original language was preserved throughout. In a brief interview after the play, Narbonne said making the language comprehensible for a modern audience is one of her primary goals. She emphasized the clarity of “every vowel and consonant” to make sure the audience understood the meaning of each line. “All Shakespeare is meant to be seen and heard,” she said. “Our mission is to make it understandable.”
After the performance, the actors remained on stage for a short question-and-answer session. Then several members of the audience stopped by to greet the cast. Among them was Bromfield math teacher Russell Wass. His niece, Marilyn Wilson, played Juliet’s nurse, who has a critical part in the plot of the play.
Narbonne said she would like to do another performance in Harvard, perhaps an evening show at the General Store. She was active in the Bromfield Drama Society while she was in school. As a senior in 2007, she played the lead role in Marsha Norman’s “Getting Out,” which was a finalist in the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival that year. In a later phone interview, Narbonne mentioned she still keeps in touch with Michael McGarty, who retired in 2010 after 34 years teaching theater arts, English, and other subjects at Bromfield. McGarty now lives in California but is still director of development for the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild.