If you look in most Shakespeare folios, the plays are grouped into the Comedies, the Tragedies, and the Histories. As if theatre is either funny or sad, or relates a historical event (which, if life imitates art, must either be funny or sad but at least is non-fiction). I suppose that this rigid categorization that scholars imposed must have its roots in classic Greek theatre. The Greeks were definitely great tragedians. A couple of weeks ago I saw Œdipus the King at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and everybody important dies (or is blinded). I haven't seen any classic Greek comedies, but I suspect that they may be based on laughing at everyone dying. The Greeks must have had romances (the kraters and urns picture them), but romance must just have been a sub-plot. Comedic romances or tragic romances were the order of the day.

Today, we have nuances of comedies. Slapstick, farce, wry, black humor, toilet humor, one-liners and more. We have tragedies, too, although Hollywood is less likely to intentionally produce one than it is to classify a box-office flop as a tragedy. We have adventures, dramas, documentaries, biographies, mysteries, horror movies, and the ever-present remakes and sequels.

Romeo and Juliet is one of those timeless tales that some folks never get tired of, so in Hollywood terms you will be viewing Pierre Charles Gounoud's operatic remake of the classic play. It doesn't sound quite so attractive when I put it that way, so you'll see why I don't like the Greek, the scholarly, or the Hollywood classifications.

Romeo and Juliet is neither comedy, nor tragedy nor certainly history, but it has elements of all. Shakespeare was a master of inserting comedy into even his darkest plays (the brooding Hamlet jousts with the gravedigger even as Ophelia is carried to her grave). There is romance amongst the drama — Shylock loses both his ducats and his daughter in the denouement. So while the ending of Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, the middle is a drama, a romance, a thriller, and a mystery.

And where is the mystery, you ask? Besides the mysterious alchemical potion that Friar Lawrence gives Juliet, the mystery of love at first sight, the mystery of how a blood-feud between Montague and Capulet can span generations without remembrance of the first insult?

The mystery of Romeo and Juliet is how one simple story - boy meets girl, both die - can be told and retold for 400 years in so many ways. Besides all the theatrical productions, it has been told by Zeferelli (all gauzy and starry eyed), by Bernstein (jazzy and driving), in Shakespeare in Love (as a play within a play), by Baz Lurhman (spledidily marrying modern genre with Elizabethan language), and by Gounod. In all the other productions I mentioned, music was a highlight, but for Gounod, music is the medium.

And therein is another mystery... I attended a dozen rehearsals of Pagiliacci, but with a new consulting job starting up, I haven't attended any for Romeo and Juliet. I haven't seen the dress rehearsal, and in fact, as I write this blog entry, I am sitting on a plane heading for California, so I will miss opening night. I can't tell you anything about the production, the staging, or the music. But at least I know the story!

So like many of you, on Tuesday I will be seeing a favorite classic story being told in a new way. And as I've said it many times before in my blog, this is gonna be fun!