"& Juliet" imagines a brainstorming session between William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, in which Juliet manages to stave off her suicidal urge and begin life anew after the death of her beloved beau. What happens next, naturally, is a cavalcade of N Sync, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, Bon Jovi and Kelly Clarkson song-and-dance numbers.
At its worst, the show is a train wreck of mixed metaphors and nonsensical non sequiturs. And that is also the show at its best. Penned with Masters-degree level knowledge of the Bard's breadth of work and personal demons, as well as PhD-level literary analysis of boy band lyrics, the result is a fantastic fever dream that combines two pieces of subject matter that belong together precisely because they don't.
The rollicking musical, which originated on the West End in 2019 and migrated to Broadway in 2022, plays like a "Now That's What I Call Music" of pop empowerment anthems of the early aughts. Numbers pop off the stage like concert show stoppers, with explosions of lasers, oversized set pieces, booming projections and a coup de grace confetti drop. Rarely does a musical so effortlessly get the audience bopping out of their seats, waving their hands and screaming in glee.
The writing leans heavily into Shakespeare's far-ahead-of-his-time gender-bending proclivities, while also exposing his chauvinistic tendencies. Sassy CJ Eldred owns the stage as Shakespeare, bickering and collaborating with his beloved, distant better half, Anne (Crystal Kellogg). The actors harmonize as a Greek chorus for the antics of the heroine, Juliette (silk-voiced Fabiola Caraballo Quijada), who sheds her lovelorn archetype in search of empowerment that aces the Bechdel test.
Bustling with an energetic and versatile ensemble, the cast soars to life, singing and dancing to songs that they probably grew up jamming out to on their hand-me-down iPods. The musical rights must have been a nightmare to collect, but the producers did such a thoroughly excellent job that its omissions stand out all the more. It's a shame, for instance, that Taylor Swift's "Love Story" wasn't somehow wedged into the tapestry.
I adored every moment of "& Juliet" as it shook up the entirety of Centennial Hall. I heard, and took part in, screams of delight that rivaled what the original artists might have been able to muster had they been on stage instead. A delightful indulgence for Shakespeare devotees and shameless afficionados of overplayed guilty pleasure hits from a couple decades ago, "& Juliet" is the musical you didn't know you needed until you had it.
"& Juliet" plays through Nov. 2 at Centennial Hall. Buy tickets here.
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