Watching "& Juliet" is like eating a box of Twizzlers. Yeah, it might be fun...it may result in a hyperactive sugar rush, but there's no question that it has absolutely no substance and, if you're really honest with yourself, it just tastes of plastic.
The attraction of "& Juliet" is the energy, dance, chance to experience fun pop songs and eye popping design elements (namely the costumes.) But the story feels like it was written by a five year old who once looked up "boss bitch" in the dictionary and has most definitely never read "Romeo and Juliet."
The plot is, on the surface, simple and yet so convoluted it is literally painful trying to make sense of it. The surface level is this:
Willam Shakespeare is about to debut his new play, "Romeo and Juliet." His wife, Anne Hathaway, blessed with a rare night off from taking care of the kids, has come to Stratford to see the premiere. Shakespeare has just finished the ending...and Hathaway hates it. After all, why should a girl kill herself over her first boyfriend? She begs her husband to change the ending, and they take turns rewriting Juliet's story, or, rather, writing a sequel that begins when Juliet wakes up to discover Romeo dead, but doesn't follow him to the grave.
Instead...at Romeo's funeral she discovers that he was a major playboy, faces the wrath of her parents who want to send her to a convent and, teaming up with the Nurse and her best friend - a non binary person named May, runs off to Paris (I mean, if she didn't marry Paris she can at least go to Paris.) She sneaks into a party, meets a shy boy named Francois and, after encouraging him to be more confident, agrees to marry him so that she can avoid convent life (her parents approve of him) and he can avoid the army. But it just so happens that Francois is in love with May, and Juliet has, at best, lukewarm feelings for him in the first place. There's a side plot involving Francois' father rekindling a relationship with Juliet's nurse (who he had been cheating on his wife with before the Nurse left for Verona to serve the Capulets), and Shakespeare stirs everything up by announcing that, surprise! Romeo isn't actually dead either. When Romeo shows up in Paris, Juliet reads him the riot act even though she does still have feelings for him. In the end, Francois ends up with May, Juliet declares her independence (although she agrees to go on a "first date" with Romeo) and Hathaway and Shakespeare repair their relationship.
The huge problem with the story is that it's preaching a message of female empowerment, while actually completely undermining the idea. Hathaway bemoans that she doesn't care what the end of Juliet's story is - she just wants Juliet to have AGENCY. To choose her own fate.
Um, darling, that's what the entirety of "Romeo and Juliet" is about.
In "Romeo and Juliet", Juliet is a young woman who is told that she's going to marry Paris. She likes Paris, isn't wowed by him, but agrees to do what her parents want. Then she falls in love with Romeo and proceeds to defy her parents, her community and her entire society in order to be with the person she loves. She knows Romeo is a player - she calls him out on it the moment she opens he opens her mouth. "You kiss by the book" isn't romantic - it's saying "wow, you've sure got some well worn lines, don't you?" The whole balcony scene is her being "stop playing around, stop being a child, grow-up, and if you're really serious about this then be serious because I won't accept anything less."
In "& Juliet" Juliet goes from a tragic four day romance that's framed as a dumb mistake, to getting engaged to someone she's known for less than twenty-four hours...and that's held up as her being a "strong independent woman." She feels a connection to Romeo, talks about their shared history - having to deal with familial trauma, and yet she's constantly told that he's, literally, a "duche" and she shouldn't waste her time on him. And everything she did in the original play is framed as her "doing what she was supposed to do instead of following her heart" which is the exact opposite of what she did.
The truth is, EVERYONE in this play is kind of an awful person... Juliet dumps her husband because he's had a lot of previous relationships and he didn't "wait long enough" after he heard she was dead before killing himself (um....??????) Her nurse was having a long term affair with a married man and has no qualms about it, the man she was having the affair with literally couldn't care less about his dead wife, Juliet's best friend makes out with her fiancee (someone sitting behind me gasped when this happened and said, loudly, "they're a terrible friend") but it's framed as fine because they're non binary and should be who they authentically are... ? Same goes for Juliet's fiancé who is clearly gay/bi. Juliet's parents are, obviously, the worst, Shakespeare is egotistical and has all but abandoned his family, and Anne Hathaway is grinding her own personal axe through screwing with her genius husband's story and absolutely ruining it. The only time you feel for someone is when Shakespeare is trying to, gently, get his story back on track (which pisses off his wife). He, very nicely, explains that for a story to hold together there HAS to be some conflict, etc. Which just pisses her off even more. He has a point. He knows what he's doing as a storyteller... Hathaway, however, keeps misreading the story as somehow being an offensive representation of her and Shakespeare's relationship which makes less than no sense. Shakespeare wrote tons of strong, independent women (including Juliet...) ESPECIALLY for the era in which he was writing. There are times when Shakespeare and Hathaway's dialogue pulls straight from Beatrice and Benedict in "Much Ado About Nothing" - which seems a much more apt lens to look at their relationship through. But who would go see a pop musical sequel to "Much Ado?" It has... far less "street cred" and few teenagers are forced to read it in their English classes.
Here's the real irony: When "Romeo and Juliet" premiered it was shocking and revolutionary. See, Shakespeare was not the first person to adapt the story. The tale was well known to Elizabethan audiences - but with a different "moral." See, the original "Romeo and Juliet" was basically a giant F.U. to teenagers. The moral was: "Kids are idiots and if you don't want to end up dead you'd better listen to your parents because they're right and you're stupid." Juliet OBVIOUSLY should have married Paris and the fact that she didn't is because she's a stupid, selfish hussy. Shakespeare's version, however, reframed the story as a warning to parents: "You need to listen to your kids and value their feelings, otherwise you're going to drive your whole family to tragedy." His Romeo and Juliet are smart and mature. Their impulsiveness mainly lies in their desperate, panicked responses to their parent's actions, not their immaturity or insincerity in their feelings. Marrying someone after knowing them for a day? That's basically how fast the Capulets are forcing Juliet to marry Paris (it's more like two ish days in their case) and was not uncommon at the time. And on, and on... Not to mention that the whole feud came down from the parents, and their parents, etc. in the first place. And let's be real, for the times, getting married before sleeping together, especially when the love/passion level was THAT high, was actually an incredibly responsible decision...and one that was supported by BOTH Juliet's nurse and freaking Friar Lawrence!
"& Juliet" shoves "strong women shouldn't be with a man" so hard down our throats it starts to go into the realm of man hating - jumping onto the radical side of feminism most real feminists strongly disagree with. WHY is Romeo so awful? I have no idea. Why is it such a bad thing for Juliet to be with him? Really, at the end of the day, the only reason we're sort of given is, well, because he's a man. And all men are slime. They certainly are in this play! Shakespeare's been neglecting and cheating on his wife, Francois is lying to and cheating on his fiancé, Francois' dad was cheating on his wife for years...yeah, in this universe I wouldn't want to be with a man either! But...neither would I want to be with any of the women. They're egotistical, rash and radically selfish. If the goal here is to present a positive feminine role model...they have NOT succeeded. I wouldn't take my daughter to this show unless she were in her thirties and able to see the glaring issues with it.
The cast is wonderful, as is the design and musical arrangements. My favorite stand out in the cast is newcomer Shelby Griswold in her too short featured role of Benvolio. The choreography by Jennifer Weber is super fun, though the dance ensemble is a bit uneven - not in terms of talent but, well, in terms of looking like they want to be there. Some are giving it their all, some look like they're going through the motions with as little energy as they can get away with. Now, this show is no joke - the dance ensemble is onstage 90% of the time in upbeat, high energy songs. Giving 110% for three hours straight eight shows a week is a lot, and pacing yourself is important, but you need to be able to cover the "pacing" more effectively than some of these folks are doing. Dominic Fallacaro needs to be singled out for the music direction which is STUNNING. Dancers AND singers need to pace themselves, but the vocals don't ever sound like they are. It's some of the best, most consistent musical direction on Broadway. The costume design by Paloma Young is inspired - combining Elizabethan clothings with contemporary aesthetic. Though this is certainly not the first time Broadway has had such a "past meets now" costuming mashup ("Hamilton" and "Six" are prime examples) these costumes take it to a cotton candy, pop fashion place that MAKES the show's aesthetic and makes you wish you could buy some of the pieces at the (now defunct) Forever 21. There are a couple moments that veer a little too close to "Six" (one ensemble member is dressed exactly like Katherine of Aragon and at one point Juliet is a dead ringer for Catherine Parr) but overall it's one of the most exciting costume designs I've seen in a long time.
The music is, of course, super fun. Primarily featuring the work of Max Martin - our modern day "hit" maker, all the numbers are bangers and fun to revisit - especially when the lyrics are used as puns for what's happening in the story (unlike other jukebox musicals, the songs chosen here are, for the most part, pretty appropriate.) Poking fun at the infamous NSYNC pronunciation of "me" in "It's Gonna Be Me" ("me" sounds more like "may") the lyric is used to announce Francois' love for May. And "I Want It That Way" becomes "I want Anne Hathaway."
There are kernels of something interesting here... all of the biographical info in the show about Shakespeare and Hathaway is accurate... and their story is far more interesting than anything else going on onstage (with the possible exception of Romeo waking up after a botched suicide and going after his wife only to find out that she's engaged to another guy forty-eight hours after his "death." And we're supposed to hate this guy?) The ultimate resolution for Juliet seems to be "Screw men, honey! You just need to be a pop star!" How much more interesting to tell the story of Hathaway and Shakespeare - she was way older than him and they were rushed into marriage because she got pregnant. Then he basically became the rock star of Elizabethan England and she lived miles and miles away. That sounds like the start of many a relationship in bio jukebox musicals about the music industry and would have actually had some basis for a feminist argument that Hathaway needs to take control of her own life.
If you want pop junk food shine (and that's not meant as an insult) this show is for you. But I don't know if any amount of "shine and no substance" is worth Broadway ticket prices.
Beth Hartley
& JULIET is currently playing at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on Broadway as well as on tour across the U.S.
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