LENOX, Mass. — Because Shakespeare’s Juliet is so irresistibly star-crossed, love-drunk and young, people tend to forget just how intelligent she is. Not Tina Packer. Portraying the female half of tragedy’s most popular double-suicide act, at the Founders’ Theater of Shakespeare & Company here, Ms. Packer glows with the energy of a quick, bright mind discovering — and enjoying — itself.
When this Juliet asks her Romeo (Nigel Gore) not to swear by the moon in the balcony scene, she’s not just dreamy and swoony. She’s playfully but sincerely considering the implications of every word she speaks. You sense a natural poet examining all the images she uses from all angles, as if not to do so would be irresponsible. What Juliet is feeling here is too deep and potentially dark to be expressed lightly, and language has never felt more important to her.
Juliet, of course, never makes it to the age of 14; Ms. Packer is past 70. Yet there’s nothing wince making about the marriage of septuagenarian actress and teenage character that concludes the first act of “Women of Will,” Ms. Packer’s lively and illuminating tour through a carefully selected gallery of Shakespeare’s heroines.