• & Juliet

12/14/25 (Sun), Broadway

This one wasn’t at the top of my to-see list during my NY visit – I had ignored it in London, where it debuted – but there weren’t many choices on a Sunday night. It was either this or Mamma Mia, another musical based on the work of Swedish songwriters, which I hadn’t seen since (gulp) 2000. I ending up going for the new piece. Big mistake.

Shakespeare’s wife Anne wants to write a happier ending for her husband’s upcoming Romeo & Juliet whereby Juliet survives. In the new version, Juliet goes to Paris and hooks up with another man, until Romeo magically reappears (it’s complicated). In the end, she marries Romeo after all but on her own terms as she is a strong, independent woman, even renaming their show Juliet & Romeo. There’s also a man who is being forced into an advantageous marriage by his father but secretly wants to be lovers with a queeny male friend. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s wife insists on being treated as her husband’s equal as a playwright and condemns him for putting his art over their marriage.

All a bunch of tripe told in a jokey style that wouldn’t pass for good panto. The idea of Juliet wanting to be her own woman and all that is fine, but if the authors had read the original play, they would realize that Juliet is already taking charge of her life by boldly running off and marrying the enemy without her parents’ permission. They have her making a big deal about her independence as a woman without even stopping to think that maybe she actually liked this guy. The PC content of this show was through the roof. The less said about the other subplots, the better.

The show is built around the songs of Swedish wunderkind Max Martin, described as one of the most successful pop songwriters of all time. He writes for Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift and others of that ilk, so the quality can be gauged from that. That’s what I had to put up for two-and-a-half hours. Mamma Mia did a much better job of integrating the songs within a reasonable book without the feminism, gay theme, or other political content, and earned its laughs from the situation and characters. Here, the jokes were more snarky and obvious, and the material was too clearly written for the numbers rather than any semblance of the other way around. The script, by a television writer, was lazy. The choreography was closer to aerobics than dance, and the direction was efficient at best.

That said, the show has been a solid hit, which I find depressing. Broadway is a sad place these days. Not recommended.