Summer is a time for Shakespeare in the Park, but this summer it was Shakespeare at the Armory, with the Royal Shakespeare Company camped out on Park Avenue offering up Julius Caesar, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. The last of these was just short of a fiasco, a clichéd, banal mess of a production. Obviously, our British friends don’t think much of their colonial cousins and are resolved to fob off upon us their second best, if indeed it is even that. With Britain currently being destroyed by its yob underclass, the RSC might want to think about working a little bit harder in New York—refugee status is not easy to come by in the United States.

The disaster that is the rsc’s Romeo and Juliet is surprising for two reasons: One, this is the Royal Shakespeare Company, after all, and one expects a certain minimal level of competence from an institution of that sort—skill if not inspiration, taste if not brilliance. The second is that the play is directed by Rupert Goold, who brought out the surprisingly witty and charming Enron, a play that I had expected to hate (a pageant of ideology, in my premonition) but that proved inventive and engaging. Great company, fine director, star-crossed lovers, a warm summer night: How do you mess that up?

You mess it up by casting Avril Lavigne as Juliet. Avril who? Miss