Theatre in Review: & Juliet (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)

	Laura Courtney (Center). Photo: Matthew Murphy

A clear example of an audience show -- if you're the right audience -- & Juliet is more of a teenage dream than an adult entertainment. This cheeky musical squib on Shakespearean tragedy is the theatrical equivalent of YA fiction, dressing up its message of female and queer self-assertion with plenty of wisecracks and a playlist of Max Martin chartbusters. Is this progressive, family-friendly fun package likely to be a smash hit? Yea, verily. Is it a hit-or-miss proposition, its fleeting pleasures sometimes trampled under a hit parade of bombastic pop tunes? Only a varlet would say so.

All right, I'm a varlet. Given Something Rotten's 2015 - 2017 run, it's a little early for another musical romp with the Bard, especially one that coasts so heavily on self-congratulation for its right-thinking attitudes. It's a classic example of a just-good-enough musical, a fast, sometimes funny evening that might really take off if it had a decent original score. Then again, without the opportunity to repurpose the likes of "Larger Than Life" and "Love Me Like You Do," & Juliet wouldn't exist in the first place. As someone once noted, it's a puzzlement.

David West Read's book posits that, on the opening night of Romeo and Juliet, Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's unhappy wife -- she's already pre-complaining about being willed his second-best bed -- shows up with a few script notes. "What I really want to see is Juliet wake up and decide to just move on," she says. And so, the battle of the quills is joined, with William and Anne each trying to commandeer the narrative for his or her own purposes, until both lose control and Juliet starts thinking for herself. (Hard-core musical theatre fans will note that this device, pitting writers against their fictional creations, is lifted from Larry Gelbart's supremely witty book for City of Angels; ultra-hard-core fans will note the resemblance to Edward Albee's hail-Mary pass at fixing the legendary disaster Breakfast at Tiffany's. But I digress.)

In Anne's revision, Juliet survives that mess with Romeo and, eager to escape being placed in a convent by her scandalized parents, flees to Paris, accompanied by her nurse Angelique, her nonbinary friend May, and her newly acquired pal April, who is Anne in disguise. (Don't overthink this one; William will eventually join the action, too.) A tangle of romantic mismatches ensues: Juliet ends up reluctantly engaged to Francois, a well-born musician who, in turn, is stunned to discover his growing attraction to May. Meanwhile, Lance, Francois' overbearing father, rekindles his long-dormant affair with Angelique, his former servant. And Romeo, who isn't dead after all -- the plot of & Juliet is nothing if not elastic -- shows up, looking for his wife on the eve of her wedding to Francois.

When sticking to the task of subverting Romeo and Juliet, the book has its moments of invention, especially Juliet's horrified discovery that, before they pledged their love, Romeo really got around. (The legion of tearful mourners, of both sexes, assembled at his tomb is the tell.) Some of the dialogue has a fine screwball comedy spin. "I just got out of a pretty serious relationship," Juliet says. "How long were you together?" Francois asks. "Four days," she replies. Also amusing are Anne's attempts at passing her middle-aged self and the thirteen-year-old Juliet as club girls in their twenties.

But when the script strays toward old-fashioned musical comedy gaggery, the humor goes thud. Consider this groaner: "I used to have a friend named Gail. She had her fun. In fact, they used to say that every man had spent a night-in-Gail." Or Anne's decision to assume the name of April. "I'm helping my best friend, Juliet. April, May, and Jul-y-et. Isn't that cute?" Honestly, no. And two jokes alluding to Anne Hathaway, the film star, are at least one too many.

West makes a solid attempt at repurposing Martin's songs in a winking, knowing away. For example, "I Want It That Way" cleverly expresses the creative tussle between Anne and William. "Oops! I Did It Again" is the apt cry of a panicked Juliet, staring down her second engagement in a single week. And "Whataya Want from Me" is put to reasonably solid use in the tense reunion of Juliet and Romeo. Others have been inserted via shoehorn: "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" makes little sense when sung by May, who doesn't subscribe to the gender binary; similarly, the Katy Perry hit "I Kissed a Girl," catchy as it is, is ill-equipped to address Francois and May's budding romance.

Ultimately, the sheer proliferation of scream-your-head-off pop hits becomes oppressive. Subtlety never got you to number one with a bullet on the Billboard chart, but when every song is pitched at finale level, a certain numbness inevitably sets in. The production is lucky to have Gareth Owen, one of the best sound designers working in London and New York, but with lyrics like these ("Oh, baby baby/How was I supposed to know/That something wasn't right here? Oh, baby, baby/I shouldn't have let you go/And now you're out of sight, yeah"), intelligibility is a mixed blessing. Oddly, the mock-Shakespearean rhymes in the script are more felicitous than anything sung.

Top-billed as Juliet is Laura Courtney, a big-voiced, fresh-faced performer who knows how to throw away laugh lines to good effect. She gives it her all, even dangling from a chandelier in one number; nevertheless, she lacks a certain star quality. She's efficient rather than scintillating. Similarly, Philippe Arroyo is solid but unexciting as Francois, although it's tough to shine when your character remains so noncommittal all night long. At the performance I attended, standby Michael Iván Carrier made a very touching thing out of May's romantic dilemma.

Stark Sands' Shakespeare gets a glittery rock-star entrance (another borrowing from Something Rotten) and he spars amusingly with Betsy Wolfe's lively, self-confident Anne; theirs is the only pairing that generates any sparks. As Lance, Paulo Szot throws his dignity to the four winds, running around his bedroom frantically on the morning after a night of love and belting a mashup of "Teenage Dream" and "Break Free" with Melanie La Barrie as Angelique; one waits in vain for a number that allows him to exercise his lustrous baritone. La Barrie lands the lion's share of the evening's laughs with her dry-eyed observations about the other characters' emotional crises. Ben Jackson Walker is so sensational in the relatively minor role of Romeo -- he all but blows the roof off with the Bon Jovi anthem "It's My Life" -- that he almost unbalances the show.

Luke Sheppard's direction keeps the action from dragging, although it does little to shore up the show's weaker passages. Jennifer Weber's choreography relies largely on massing the chorus to strike assertive poses; surely something more dynamic is wanted. But the proceedings are enlivened by a clever production design. Scenic designer Soutra Gilmour delivers crypts, churches, and chateaux in abundance, in addition to a Paris ball complete with a Renaissance DJ station. A raised circular platform and turntable adds some pizzazz to the musical numbers; other nifty touches include a carriage drawn by a horse-shaped bicycle. Andrzej Goulding's video/projection design covers the stage with maps of London, Paris, and Verona, along with carousels, Ferris wheels, rising and falling decibel meters, and a kaleidoscopic vision of cathedral rose windows. Paloma Young's costumes mix ruffles and miniskirts, doublets and denim, to good effect. Howard Hudson's lighting deploys a battery of strip lights, moving head units, and blinder/strobe units to confidently pace and power the musical numbers. Owen's sound design knows when to blast the room and when to pull back.

As is usually the case in jukebox musicals, & Juliet's main interest lies in delivering as many vintage hits as possible. This is especially clear in the second act, which descends into near incoherence when William and Romeo disguise themselves as Francois' brothers, back from some war or other. Neither Francois nor Lance notices the impersonation, but, hey, it allows the four of them to make like a boy band and deliver "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)." (Interestingly, nobody ever points out that Juliet, in agreeing to march down the aisle with Francois, is committing bigamy.) Audiences looking to rock out to these vintage hits are likely to go with the book's cheerful, breezily inclusive tone. Certainly, nobody involved in & Juliet is trying to pass it off as anything more than an upbeat songfest laced with some laughs and a plenty of applause lines about being true to yourself. If you like it that way, you'll have a fine time at the Sondheim. --David Barbour