SURE TO BE A CONVERSATION STARTER.

Shakespeare’s greatest love story moves decisively into the 21st century in Barbara Gaines’s first-ever production of “Romeo and Juliet,” which opened Thursday at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Maintaining her place as an edgy, ahead-of-her-time visionary, Gaines advances the story to August 2020, an artistic gamble in the name of keeping it relevant and topical while providing opportunities to explore other-than-traditional aspects of the text to pierce our stony apathy toward violence in our society