Romeo & Juliet Gets The Treatment

It's 11:30 AM, and I'm in my office listening to a student audience scream with joy at the production of Romeo & Juliet they're watching above my head. As happy as I am that they like the show, one aspect of the production gnaws at me.
I don't always have a problem setting Shakespeare in a non-Elizabethan period. I've worked on some great shows that skipped men in tights for another look. A Victorian Love's Labors Lost and a Third World Banana Republic Julius Caesar are two that pop up in my mind as solid, well-executed pieces of theatre.
This time we've set R&J in a Verona that mimics modern day Miami. Bright colored buildings with palms and Spanish tiled roofs and cellphones and blackberries, and here's the rub, gentle reader. Cellphones and blackberries are my problem.
The story of Romeo & Juliet is fairly dependent on that old chestnut of a plot devise, the lost message. Romeo never gets the note telling him that Juliet is faking her suicide and it all falls apart from there. So in this production, do all the cell towers go down at once? Did Romeo forget to take a charger with him into exile, and there's not one Radio Shack in Mantua? I can't stop imagining Romeo walking around with his cellphone to his ear, repeating "canst thou hear me now" over and over (Verona Wireless - Its The Network.)
All in all, its still a well-acted, solidly staged production. The costumes, sets, props and lighting are all first rate, if I do say so myself. And later this season we're producing West Side Story. Maybe we'll set it in the future. I'm thinking Predator Tony falls for Alien Maria, and boy do the sparks fly.