Lorna Courtney plays Juliet Capulet in & Juliet, now onstage at the Princess of Wales Theatre until Aug. 14.Matthew Murphy/Supplied
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- Title: & Juliet
- Written by: David West Read
- Music and lyrics by: Max Martin and friends
- Director: Luke Sheppard
- Actors: Lorna Courtney, Betsy Wolfe, Stark Sands, Justin David Sullivan
- Company: Mirvish Productions
- Venue: Princess of Wales Theatre
- City: Toronto, Ont.
- Year: Runs to August 14 in Toronto, then from October 28 in New York
Critic’s Pick
The jukebox musical is back from the dead in Toronto.
& Juliet, a West-End born show-within-a-show that resurrects the Shakespearean heroine and gives her life after Romeo, is unabashed theatrical fun of the kind that encourages dancing in your seat and sets off confetti cannons over your head.
It’s built around the Swedish producer and songwriter Max Martin’s biggest hits – and seems like ideal summer entertainment for a Toronto in search of joy after two years of pandemic. (The North American premiere production opened at the Princess of Wales on Thursday and heads to Broadway in late October.)
The average pop enthusiast may not know Martin, but everybody knows his songs, performed for the past quarter century by divas of the day from Britney to Pink to Katy Perry to Ariana Grande (also: the Backstreet Boys). Only Lennon and McCartney have written or co-written more chart-toppers.
From the left; Joomin Hwang, Rachel Webb, Bobby 'Pocket' Horner, Lorna Courtney and Virgil Gadson in & Juliet.Matthew Murphy/Supplied
In & Juliet, a cast of Broadway and the West End’s best singers and musical comedy actors (and an opera star thrown in for good measure) take turns belting out a score that should have a piece of Proustian pop in it to take Everybody under the age of 45 back to their Teenage Dream.
With a script by Toronto-raised Schitt’s Creek writer David West Read, & Juliet begins at the end of the 16th century on opening night of Romeo and Juliet. Anne Hathaway (Betsy Wolfe, Waitress) shows up to surprise her husband, William Shakespeare (Stark Sands, Kinky Boots); she’s hired a babysitter, come in from Stratford-upon-Avon and is ready for a glass of wine and some seat-dancing herself.
When Will reveals the bloody climax of the tragedy, Anne says she doesn’t want it (to end) that way: What if Juliet lived, instead?
And so, the Shakespeare spouses begin to co-write a new show – and, after awaking in the tomb, Juliet Capulet (Lorna Courtney) chooses not to kill herself over a boy she’s only known for four days.
Instead, with her parents threatening to send her to a nunnery, Juliet runs away to Paris with her best friend May (Justin David Sullivan), her nurse (Melanie La Barrie) and her other best friend April – who is really Anne, inserting herself into the action.
In the city of love, Juliet and company sneak into a Moulin Rouge!-esque club (indeed, a miniature Moulin Rouge makes a cameo in Soutra Gilmour’s set) and get wrapped up in a drama involving a young man named François (Philippe Arroyo) whose father, Lance (Paulo Szot), is pressuring him to get married.
Lorna Courtney and Melanie La Barrie in & Juliet.Matthew Murphy/Supplied
Everything is gleefully anachronistic – from Read’s sometimes-rhyming dialogue, to Jennifer Weber’s hip-hop/boy-band choreography, to the tiny fluorescent-coloured backpacks that costume designer Paloma Young straps to each character’s back – and the supporting characters are all vividly drawn.
May, who is exploring their gender identity, has the freshest and the most emotional arc. I’m sure somebody on the internet is going to have an issue with using I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman to explore this subject matter – but Sullivan (who uses he/she/they pronouns) sells everything as an individual and, additionally, has swoon-worthy chemistry with their romantic interest.
The funniest scenes are between Lance and the nurse, who turn out to have a history; Brazilian baritone Szot, who was one of the greatest Emile De Becques ever to grace Broadway, embraces the silliest of schtick, with operetta-style gusto, and you never question for a moment why La Barrie, who balances hilarity with heart, was brought over from England to take this show to Broadway.
Will, an understandably egotistical artist, and Anne, over-eager to recapture her youth in the play-within-the-play, have a zippy dynamic as well; Sands remains a boyish wonder, but Wolfe proves top Shakespeare of the night with her spine-shaking rendition of Celine Dion’s That’s the Way It Is.
There is a problem with & Juliet, however, and it lies with its ill-defined title character, who gets buffeted about by both the writer of the musical (Read) and the writers in it (Anne and Will). A plot twist at the end of the first act is wickedly witty, but, in completely upending Juliet’s situation, leaves her unmoored on her path through power pop from Since U Been Gone to Problem to Roar.
Director Luke Sheppard’s answer is to lift Juliet up, literally, as often as possible – with concert-style elevator platforms or Ferris wheels or chandeliers. Courtney, whose pipes are never in question, does not get much opportunity to root her character in any semblance of reality and her plot-line peters out into a series of confusing alternate endings.
That this Juliet – a fictional creation of a male writer, now given a rethink by another male writer – is so adrift can make the script’s relentless focus on female empowerment come across as shallow. It’s not that male artists can’t write feminist shows, but too often this one’s take on girl power feels ingratiating.
Compare and contrast Mamma Mia!, which this show, also British-born and first entering the North American market via Toronto, hopes to be compared and contrasted with. It owes its success to Catherine Johnson’s underrated script – feminist insofar as it’s full of funny, fully-drawn female characters.
& Juliet, instead, reminded me more of All Shook Up, a Joe DiPietro 2004 musical inspired by Shakespeare’s comedies and written around Elvis songs, which was a good time but didn’t last a long time on Broadway.
If there’s still time, I’d suggest Read take another shake at Juliet – maybe let her be the one to break Shakespeare’s quill and take control of her narrative? His West End hit will rock Toronto right this summer but it’s heading off to a marketplace where it faces tough competition from a couple of box-office smashes with similarities: Six, another British show nerdy about history and nostalgic for the pop of the last 25 years, and Moulin Rouge!, an expensive stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s film, which is emotionally dead but next-level in its mega-mix score.
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