Romeo and Juliet (c) Julieta Cervantes
Theater: Romeo and Juliet
NAATCO (in partnership with Two River Theater)
On the heels of winning the Lortel Award for writing and directing the imaginative Wolf Play last season, Hansol Jung and Dustin Wills, respectively, have set a goal to reimagine Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which has been saturating the market in revisions recently including Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning West Side Story remake, as well as other musical adaptation like Romeo and Bernadette (exorcising Juliet) and & Juliet (canceling out Romeo). So, it’s kind of nice to actually just watch Bill’s original with both leads intact, even if Jung has supplemented the original verse with some modern lingo, like cougars, ghosting and the music of Prince. Like Wolf Play, the staging and set (by Junghyun Georgia Lee) at first feels very cluttered and chaotic, but everything comes together by the end and utilized in some way or another. The very talented and exhaustive Asian-American cast of nine, switch roles nimbly and run up and around the stage with ease, including two openings in the middle of the playing area that could possibly be a wrong turn drop. Major Curda plays Romeo as a more sensitive soul with a guitar, annoying his friends, a very energetic – and maybe slightly in love with Romeo – Mercutio (Jose Gamo) and levelheaded Benvolio (Zion Jang), to no end. Still mooning over the unseen Rosaline (who herself is the hero of her own movie on Hulu), Romeo is soon smitten with the young (notice her footwear) Juliet (the headstrong Dorcas Leung), who may not be thinking of an arranged marriage, but also falls for the swoony Romeo, with the help of her ever-trusting Nurse (Mia Katigbak).
Romeo and Juliet (c) Julieta Cervantes
Everything plays out as per usual, but with a sideways kind of modern perspective that gives the production a liveliness throughout. They incorporate a DJ modulator/mixer thingie that can create music from words and sounds and drops beats to give the production its modern-day aura. And your tolerance may be tested by the intense overemphasis of the phallic and sexual puns and wordplay or the silly clowning around throughout, since this is essentially a tragedy, but I will always like a production that errs on the side of creativity over safe interpretations. Overall, this production, co-directed by Wills and Jung, gives the familiar story some inventive elements to highlight it in a new way. And “there art thou happy.”
& Juliet (c) Matthew Murphy
& Juliet
On Broadway at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre
Poor Romeo. He is dead by poison, and when Juliet wakes up from her deep slumber, there he is, with nary a drop of poison for Juliet to join her star-crossed lover. But why must she? That’s the question of Anne Hathaway, not the Princess Diary actress but the wife of William Shakespeare, who after seeing a rehearsal of his latest tragedy has decided to rewrite the ending where Juliet exits her tomb and is liberated from the whole Romeo mess. This larger-than-life scenario is the brainchild of David West Read, one of the writers of the wonderful TV show Schitt’s Creek, and he gives this musical, which uses the songs of Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning Max Martin as its score, a funny and decidedly queer sensibility to what could have been a run-of-the-mill jukebox musical into an engaging and surprisingly fun musical romp. For an audience of certain age, the songs of Max Martin with just a few notes heard and recognized, will be giggly catnip, with tunes made famous by, among others, Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, N*SYNC, P!NK, Kelly Clarkson and Britney Spears. Interestingly, when the Britney Spears musical Once Upon a One More Time opens this summer, Max Martin songs will be heard in more musicals running on Broadway than Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
& Juliet (c) Matthew Murphy
The songs provide the energy for an inventive story where Juliet (the overtalented Lorna Courtney) with her nurse (Melanie La Barrie) and best friends April (Anne Hathaway stepping into her own play) and May (Justin David Sullivan) in tow, travel to France from Verona to find new adventures. I wish the trio found more fun things to do before the next love story sets up, but on their first evening in Paris, they go to a ball (in a sort of Cinderella way) thrown by the wealthy Lance (Paulo Szot) to find a wife for the socially awkward but charming François (Philippe Arroyo), and while half the fun of the show is not knowing where the story goes, let’s just say a love triangle soon turns into a four-person quandary with…well, again like all good love stories, the shape of one’s heart is rarely symmetrical. All this happens with Shakespeare (Stark Sands) watching in horror as Anne (the wonderful Betsy Wolfe) makes the story her own – but the Bard has tricks up his proverbial sleeve as well. While the songs are fun, it’s the main cast and ensemble that really sell the show. Sullivan gives new nonbinary dimensions to “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” and if you ever wondered what a Backstreet Boys song sounds like coming out of legit opera singer Szot, well, here it is. After finally catching the show on Broadway, which premiered late last year, I was surprised by how much I was invested in it, winningly directed by Luke Sheppard, who also helmed the Olivier Award-winning West End premiere in 2019. This musical shows us the meaning of being creative and its jukebox milieu (with innovatively clever orchestrations by Bill Sherman and Dominic Fallacaro) is stronger than most. Let this light-as-air show lift you up for over two hours and just enjoy the giddy and colorful confetti as it showers down on you.
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