Last time I reviewed a Shakespeare play staged by the daring and gifted Sam Gold, I led with a cheeky question about bowls of soup slurped by the ensemble of Macbeth (his invention). I won’t repeat myself by querying the numerous fuzzy, pink teddy bears that appear in Gold’s Romeo Juliet, a hurtling, pop-scored, brat-summer spin on the lover’s tragedy. Anyway, those ursine plushies require no strenuous interpretation: They’re fluffy tokens of childhood, which the teenage characters cling to even as they stumble into a whirlwind of sex and violence.
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The stuffed toys spill out of a shopping cart tipped over center stage in the scenic environment devised by the ingenious collective dots. Nearby rests an inflatable pink plastic recliner. Later the top of the circular playing space will flip up, revealing a field of vibrant flowers. Bathed in Isabella Byrd’s throbbing mauve, red, and blue lights and pounded by EDM beats from an onstage DJ (music by hitmaker Jack Antonoff), Circle in the Square becomes a warehouse rave. Propped on a raised platform to one side there’s yet another (jumbo-size) teddy bear—its torso the hiding place for........