&Juliet blends Shakespeare with queerness in a punk/baroque aesthetic that sets a memorable tone for the show from the moment the lights turn on. The Honors College recently provided reduced-price tickets to a Monday night showing of &Juliet for Honors students. While I’m not often interested in Shakespeare, this adaptation of Romeo & Juliet subverted my expectations and made my night memorable.
&Juliet starts with a simple premise: It is the end of Romeo & Juliet, and the star-crossed lovers are dead. It then asks what would happen if Juliet lived. From there, the musical deviates from Shakespeare’s narrative as Juliet, having survived a traumatic experience, learns to navigate the world alongside May, her nonbinary best friend.
The cast includes Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, providing moments well beyond the fourth wall. They offer some much-appreciated comic relief to contrast with Juliet’s struggle to find her place in the world. Several other characters from Romeo & Juliet make appearances in the musical, but I’ll leave those for you to discover for yourself!
The costume design complements each character very well. May, for example, dresses in loose pants and a corset, establishing their role outside of gender norms from the moment they come onstage. Each outfit involves some combination of modern punk & traditional Baroque fashions. Punk represents deviation from Juliet’s wishes, with characters that upset the story’s status quo being dressed in dramatically punk outfits, while characters that wish to preserve the way the world is dressed in formal 1600s dress. As new additions to the cast become accepted as part of the story, their costumes change to align with the Baroque status quo.
The set design solidifies the clash between historical and modern aesthetics with modern furniture painted in a range of pastels – closer to the styles we’re familiar with but still with a color palette outside of what we’d expect. The pastels provided a welcoming canvas for the lights, which turned neon for the most dramatic numbers of the show. The set pieces allowed for many moments of creative choreography. My personal favorite was the number where Juliet flew around the stage on a park bench, arcing over the treeline during the emotional climax of the scene. Overall, the set helped solidify the tone of the show and emphasized the experiences of the characters.
The music added a comic tone, using several parodies to provide a break from the plot’s more dramatic elements. Between the modern set and the modern music, the Baroque-era costumes stuck out from the rest of the show’s design, emphasizing how &Juliet deviates from the typical Shakespearean narrative.
Overall, I really enjoyed &Juliet! Its clever combination of modern and Baroque aesthetics and its twists on Shakespearean themes had me on the edge of my seat. I was pleasantly surprised by how far it deviated from the typical Shakespeare show while still paying respects to the bard.
I’m looking forward to future Honors nights on Broadway!
Feature image via https://andjulietbroadway.com/