‘& Juliet' euphorically turns Shakespeare's tragedy into a Max Martin dance party
Tired of being cooped up with the kids in Stratford-upon-Avon, Anne (Teal Wicks), wife of the great playwright, pops down to London to see the first performance of 'Romeo and Juliet.' The new tragic ending that Shakespeare (Corey Mach) proudly previews to the company strikes her as completely wrongheaded.
'What if … Juliet doesn't kill herself?' she proposes. As strong-willed as her husband, she doesn't wish to argue the point. She merely wants to put her idea to the test.
Behold the premise of '& Juliet,' the euphoric dance party of a musical that updates Shakespeare with a dose of 21st century female empowerment. The production, which opened Friday at the Ahmanson Theatre under the fizzy direction of Luke Sheppard, reimagines a new post-Romeo life for Juliet while riding a magic carpet of chart-toppers from juggernaut Swedish producer Max Martin, who has spun gold with Katy Perry, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, among other pop titans.
This good-time jukebox musical relies as much on its wit as on its catalog of pop hits. The show's music and lyrics are credited to Max Martin and friends — which sounds like a low-key cool table at the Grammy Awards. The clever book by Emmy winner David West Read ('Schitt's Creek') creates a world that can contain the show's musical riches without having to shoehorn in songs in the shameless fashion of 'Mamma Mia!'
Take, for instance, one of the early numbers, 'I Want It That Way,' a pop ballad made famous by the Backstreet Boys. Anne starts singing the song when Shakespeare initially resists her idea of giving Juliet back her life. She wants him to go along with her suggested changes not because she's sure she's right but because she wants him to trust her as an equal partner. The song is redeployed in a way that has little bearing on the lyrics but somehow feels coherent with the original emotion.
Obviously, this is a commercial musical and not a literary masterpiece on par with Shakespeare's tragedy of ill-starred lovers. '& Juliet' would have trouble withstanding detailed scrutiny of its plot or probing interrogation of Juliet's character arc. But Read smartly establishes just the right party atmosphere.
Juliet (a vibrant Rachel Webb), having survived the tragedy once scripted for her, travels from Verona to Paris with an entourage to escape her parents, who want to send her to a nunnery for having married Romeo behind their backs. Her clique includes Angélique (Kathryn Allison), her nurse and confidant; May (Nick Drake), her nonbinary bestie; and April, her newbie sidekick out for fun who Anne plays in disguise. Shakespeare casts himself as the carriage driver, allowing him to tag along and keep tabs on the cockeyed direction his play is going.
In Paris, the crew heads directly to the Renaissance Ball, which has the look and feel of a modern-day mega-club. Entry is barred to Juliet, but not because she's ridiculously underage. Her name isn't on the exclusive guest list. So through the back door, Juliet and her traveling companions sashay as the production erupts in 'Blow,' the Kesha song that encourages everyone to get their drink on and let loose.
The dance setting — kinetically envisioned by scenic designer Soutra Gilmour, lighting designer Howard Hudson, sound designer Gareth Owen and video and projection designer Andrzej Goulding into a Dionysian video paradise — provides the all-purpose license for Martin's music. It's the atmosphere and the energy that matter most. Paloma Young's extravagant costumes raise the level of decadent hedonism.
In this welcoming new context — imagine 'Moulin Rouge! The Musical' suffused with girl power — there's never anything odd about the characters grinding and wailing like karaoke superstars. The ecstatic motion of Jennifer Weber's choreography renders dramatic logic irrelevant.
But love is the name of the game, and both Juliet and May fall for François (Mateus Leite Cardoso), a young musician with a geeky sense of humor who's still figuring out his identity. May doesn't expect romance to be part of their fate. In the Spears song 'I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,' they give powerful expression to an inner confusion this musical romance is determined to sort out with an appropriate partner.
Unlike for the original characters, a happy ending is no longer off-limits. Shakespeare and Anne wrestle to get the upper hand of a plot that seems to have a mind of its own. Shakespeare pulls a coup at the end of the first act that I won't spoil except to say that what's good for the goose proves dramaturgically viable for the gander.
This spirited competition stays in the background, but their marital happiness matters to us. Mach's Shakespeare has the cocky strut of a rapper-producer with a long list of colossal hits. Wicks gives Anne the heartfelt complexity of one of her husband's bright comic heroines. There's a quality of intelligent feeling redolent of Rosalind in 'As You Like It' in Wicks' affecting characterization and luscious singing.
But the musical belongs to Juliet, and Webb has the vocal prowess to hijack the stage whenever she's soaring in song. If Juliet's character is still a work in progress, Webb endows her with a maturity beyond her years. She makes us grateful that the Capulet daughter is getting another crack at life. When the big musical guns are brought out late in the second act ('Stronger,' 'Roar'), she delivers them as emancipatory anthems, fueled by hard-won epiphanies.
Allison's Angélique is just as much a standout, renewing the bawdy earthiness of Shakespeare's nurse with contemporary sass and rousing singing. If the supporting cast of men doesn't make as deep an impression, the festive comic universe is nonetheless boldly brought to life.
'& Juliet' bestows the alternative ending everyone wishes they could script for themselves — a second chance to get it right. This feel-good musical is just what the doctor ordered in these far less carefree times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Inside the tragedy that silenced a soul legend: Marvin Gaye's last fight with his father
By the time 44-year-old Marvin Gaye moved into the big, rambling house with his parents on South Gramercy Place, his cocaine habit was severe and his paranoia was deep. Enemies were conspiring against him, he feared. He gave his father a .38-caliber revolver. To protect the house, he said. He had come full-circle from childhood, to live with his mother, who adored him, and his disapproving father, who would kill him. It was 1984. It might have been a period of triumph for the vocalist known as the King of Sensual Soul. The year before, he had finally won two Grammy Awards after decades of nominations. At the NBA All-Star Game in Inglewood, he had delivered a slowed-down, funkified version of the Star Spangled Banner that redefined the national anthem. He had broken free from Motown, his longtime label, with a hit comeback album, 'Midnight Love,' and one of his signature songs, 'Sexual Healing.' Suave tenor, restless risk-taker, longtime sex symbol with an elegant-playboy persona, Gaye had an otherworldly voice. His falsetto found new registers of rapture and longing. His songs married carnality and spirituality, with an echo of the little boy singing in the gospel choir of his father's church. 'My daddy was a minister,' Gaye said, 'and so when I began to sing it was for him.' Growing up in a slum of Washington, D.C., he had inherited his father's harsh Pentecostal Christianity and his notions of discipline, heaven and hell. There was little tenderness in his relationship with Marvin Gay Sr., a jealous man who drank hard and dressed in women's clothes, a habit that embarrassed the young singer. They were at war from the start. The father beat the son regularly, and scorned nonreligious music as the devil's work. 'My husband never wanted Marvin,' the singer's mother, Alberta, told a biographer. 'And he never liked him. He used to say that he didn't think he was really his child. I told him that was nonsense. He knew Marvin was his. But for some reason, he didn't love Marvin and, what's worse, he didn't want me to love Marvin either. Marvin wasn't very old before he understood that.' In 'Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye' by David Ritz, Gaye describes his father as 'a very peculiar, changeable, cruel, and all-powerful king,' adding: 'Even though winning his love was the ultimate goal of my childhood, I defied him. I hated his attitude. I thought I could win his love through singing, so I sang my heart out.' Gaye noticed his jealousy. 'I realized my voice was a gift of God and had to be used to praise Him,' Gaye said, but his father 'hated it when my singing won more praise than his sermons.' Even as he grew bigger than his father, Gaye would recall, the violence continued. 'I wanted to strike back, but where I come from, even to raise your hand to your father is an invitation for him to kill you.' It was a volatile relationship, Ritz told the Times in a recent interview, and a complicated one. 'The man who beat him also led him to God,' Ritz said. To escape him, the singer dropped out of high school and joined the Air Force, then faked a mental breakdown and won an honorable discharge. He dreamed of being the Black Frank Sinatra. He found a surrogate father in Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, and became an architect of the famous Motown sound. His 1968 version of 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine,' a song about a man tormented by rumors of his lover's infidelity, was a No. 1 hit. Gaye drew inspiration from his disintegrating marriage to Gordy's sister. His father hated work. His mother rose at 5 to clean rich people's houses. When Gaye started making money to provide for her, it became another source of resentment between father and son. Against resistance from Motown, he gambled with the self-written, self-produced 'What's Going On,' the radical 1971 concept album that launched him into the stratosphere. (Rolling Stone has called it the greatest album of all time.) His social commentary encompassed war, protests, ghetto life, police brutality, pollution, and nuclear holocaust. Inspired by his brother Frankie, he sang about a struggling soldier back from Vietnam. And he sang, 'Father father/ We don't need to escalate/You see, war is not the answer.' As his fame increased, he became reclusive. Worshipful crowds filled his concert seats —women particularly adored him — but the love felt fleeting and unreliable. 'I want to be liked and I would hate it, I mean really hate it, if an audience didn't like me,' he told The Times. 'It's really a hang-up.' He hated the government and scorned taxes, which the government noticed. By the late 1970s he was bankrupt and owed the IRS $2 million. He fled for Europe, chased by creditors and depressed that Motown seemed to have given up on him amid a sales slump. ('I adore being revered,' he said. 'I wasn't being adored here.') He spent 3 1/2 years in self-imposed exile, and returned to tell The Times, 'I'm egotistical. I could lie and pretend that I'm very humble but that's jive. You can't do what I'm doing and not have a big ego to feed.' In 1983, as Gaye toured with his 'Midnight Love' album, which he made for Columbia Records, Times music critic Robert Hilburn described one of his concerts as a 'triumphant showcasing' of artistry that marked a liberating break from Motown. 'At last, he was standing alone: the artist vindicated,' Hilburn wrote. 'This tour is supposed to be the culmination of that artistic climb.' But Gaye was wrestling with serious depression, and a freebasing habit that inflamed his paranoia. He was found wandering on the freeway, as if daring cars to hit him. More than once, he had talked of suicide — he admitted trying to do it with a cocaine overdose — but had not been able to go all the way. His father's religion told him it was a mortal sin. In early 1984, twice divorced, Gaye was back with his parents, living down the hall from his father on the second floor of the family's brickfront Tudor in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. It was a 'madhouse' where screaming matches were frequent, as Frankie Gaye, who lived next door, wrote in his memoir 'Marvin Gaye, My Brother.' The musician holed up in his bedroom, with a gun in the pocket and a Bible in his hand, and steady visits from his drug dealers. His 69-year-old mother doted on him, cooking for him, rubbing his feet, and praying with him. The father, often drunk, resented the loss of her attention. He kept the .38 revolver, a gift from his son, under his pillow. The fatal confrontation was on April 1, 1984. The father had come to the son's bedroom, and was berating his wife about a misplaced letter from an insurance company. The singer ordered him out of the room, then followed him into the hall and 'pushed the father around pretty good,' police said. The father returned with the gun and shot his son twice, once in the shoulder and once in the heart. When news got out, some thought at first it must be a twisted April Fool's joke. Some, like his biographer Ritz, saw it as the culmination of Gaye's death wish and thought, 'So that's how he did it.' At Forest Lawn Memorial Park, 10,000 fans stood in a mile-long line to say goodbye. It was estimated to be the biggest crowd in park history. In his account to a probation officer, Gay said that his son had pushed him to the floor and kicked him, and that he grabbed the gun from under his pillow in fear of further attack. Los Angeles prosecutors charged him with murder but found themselves with a weak case. Toxicology reports showed cocaine in the singer's system. A court-ordered brain scan revealed that the 71-year-old defendant had been suffering from a walnut-sized brain tumor, which defense attorneys were prepared to argue had affected his judgment. Plus, photos of the defendant showed that his body was covered with fresh bruises, suggesting that he had taken a severe beating from his son. Dona Bracke, who prosecuted the case, recalled that one of the bruises on his side was the size of a melon. 'I thought, 'That's not a punch, that has to be a kick,'' she said in a recent interview. 'Clearly, it had been a huge fight.' This buttressed the case for self-defense. 'We had all kinds of photographs of the old man exhibiting bruises and welts and lacerations as result of Marvin's beatings,' Arnold Gold, one of Marvin Gay Sr.'s defense attorneys, told The Times in a recent interview. 'I had sensational defense facts, not the least of which was the only witness was the mother,' Gold said, and 'she refused to testify.' Gold said he was holding out for a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter, but 'everybody wanted the case resolved as quickly as possible.' And so Marvin Gay Sr. accepted the deal when, five months after the shooting, prosecutors allowed him to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter. The conviction might have brought him up to 13 years in prison, but the probation department had recommended against lockup, and there was little expectation that the judge would give him hard time. What Gold recalls about his client is 'how sad and pathetic he was.' The legal process unfolded in a relatively fast and muted fashion, without notable controversy or protest. 'This was one of the first big-name criminal cases, but it didn't have the polarization that, for example, O.J. Simpson had,' Gold said. Both parties were Black, so 'we had no race element to it at all that would have been available to be exploited.' Bracke, the prosecutor, said she was surprised that there was so little uproar surrounding the case. 'I was thinking I'd get a phone call from someone irate. 'He murdered his son, you're letting him off.' I never got anything.' She said she had a conversation with a Black records clerk who gave her a hint as to why. 'I said, 'Where's the hue and cry from the community?' This was clearly a favored son, and it was just so quiet. And she said, 'In the Black community our fathers would say, I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.' ' Some in Gay's family, like his brother Frankie and sister Jeanne, concluded that Gaye had orchestrated his own death. She said her father had made it clear that if Marvin hit him, he would kill him. By provoking his father, he had ended his own misery and had freed his mother, who finally found the courage to leave her husband of 48 years. Ritz said he thinks of it less as a crime than a tragedy, and as an elaborately choreographed suicide that had the added effect of punishing the father. 'He thought that because his father had killed him, his father would go to hell,' Ritz said. In his memoir, Frankie Gaye describes rushing into his brother's bedroom to cradle him as he died. 'I got what I wanted,' the singer mumbled, by his brother's account. 'I couldn't do it myself, so I made him do it.' Informed of that account, Bracke, the prosecutor, said she had not heard it before. 'He certainly didn't tell detectives that version,' she said. 'That's the first I've ever heard of that.' Seven months after he killed his son, Marvin Gay Sr. received a sentence of probation from a Superior Court judge who concluded that the singer had provoked the fatal confrontation, and that prison would be a death sentence for the frail, aging defendant. Gay Sr., who would live another 14 years, stood between his attorneys and thanked the judge for his mercy. His voice shook, and he spoke very softly. He said he was sorry. He said he had been afraid. 'I wish he could step through the door right now,' he said. 'I loved him. I love him right now.'
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
'Beyoncé Bowl,' Super Bowl choreographer started working with Madonna in high school
From the "Beyoncé' Bowl" to the Super Bowl, Charm La'Donna has choreographed some of pop culture's defining moments. Now, she joins a rarefied group as only the fourth Black woman ever nominated for an Emmy in choreography. This year, La'Donna earned two Emmy nominations for outstanding choreography for variety or reality programming — one for her contribution to Beyoncé's NFL Christmas Day halftime show and another for Kendrick Lamar's history-making Super Bowl halftime performance. Both stand among the most talked-about cultural moments of the past year. "The 'Beyoncé Bowl' was my first time working with Beyoncé, and it was just a beyond amazing experience for me," La'Donna says. "I'm so grateful and blessed to be able to work with amazing artists across the board — Beyoncé and Kendrick included. I feel like every project that I work on has some impact on me." The two nods make her the fourth Black woman in history to be recognized in the choreography category at the Emmys, joining Debbie Allen, Chloé Arnold and her mentor Fatima Robinson. And while her work has been showcased on some of the world's biggest stages and tours, she greets the recent recognition with a humble heart. 'I don't even know if I have the words, to be honest," she says. "The first thing I say is that I'm blessed and grateful. I'm still in shock. It's an honor just to be acknowledged on this type of platform. It's definitely a dream come true." Born Charmaine La'Donna Jordan, the Compton, California, native was raised by her mom and grandmother and began dance training at age 3. Her career blossomed early, with formal studies at Regina's School of the Arts before she attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. By the age of 10, she was cast in a video under Robinson, who took her under her wing. At 17, while still in high school, Madonna hired her as a choreographer. La'Donna went on to earn a bachelor's degree in world arts and cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles while continuing to work professionally. "Being from where I'm from and from Compton, and growing up in the city of Los Angeles, that is very heavily rooted in who I am, how I move and my experiences," La'Donna says. Inspired by hip-hop and R&B, her style mixes street and formal training with a focus on musicality and emotion. However, she sees herself as more than just a choreographer. She's also a storyteller, tastemaker and soon-to-be-director. "I call myself a hybrid. I have trained in many different styles, art forms of dance, and I feel like all of the styles that I've been able to study are blended well and put out through me," she says. "So I take my experiences, I look at the world, and I'm able to blend it in my body, and God allowed me to move and put it out." While this year marks her first two Emmy nods, she has an impressive track record. She has collaborated with top musicians including The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, Shakira, Selena Gomez, Megan Trainor and Pharrell Williams. La'Donna was recently nominated for best choreography at this year's MTV's Video Music Awards for Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us' video. Last year, she took home the same award for her work on Dua Lipa's 'Houdini.' She's now looking to expand into TV and film, launch mentorship programs for dancers and step into directing. "I think the accolades are beautiful and we work toward them, but I love the process," she says. "I love the work that goes into creating the art for whoever to see. You're talking to the little girl who used to choreograph in her room by herself, and now I see my work all over the world." Produced by Beyoncé's Parkwood Entertainment and Jesse Collins Entertainment, the "Beyoncé Bowl", which is now standalone special on Netflix, received four nods at the 2025 Emmys. Kendrick Lamar also garnered four nods for his Super Bowl performance. While the award show is slated for next month, Beyoncé already earned her first Emmy for outstanding costumes for variety, nonfiction or reality programming as a costume designer along with other members of her team. This year's Primetime Emmys will be Sept. 14 in Los Angeles. Follow Caché McClay, the USA TODAY Network's Beyoncé Knowles-Carter reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @cachemcclay.
New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
For Zach Cherry, ‘Severance' Was a Leap of Faith
Zach Cherry has put in his time at the office. Before he earned his first Emmy nomination playing a diligent employee of the enigmatic Lumon Industries on the Apple TV+ thriller 'Severance,' he worked for many years as an office manager at a nonprofit organization in Manhattan. It was a job that Cherry appreciated for allowing him the flexibility to pursue opportunities in improv comedy and acting, and for its relatively relaxed atmosphere, though he did get reprimanded once for wearing shorts to the office. He explained that it was not his employers, specifically, who were mad at him. 'My company didn't care,' Cherry said. 'But we were subletting space from a larger company and it went through the grapevine to my boss that I wore shorts one day. I was told you actually can't. So I found the limits of business casual.' Cherry, 37, had a pleasantly laid back demeanor as he sat in the basement food court of the City Point mall in Downtown Brooklyn one recent August morning. His beard was bushy and he was dressed in comfortable, loosefitting clothes he acknowledged were 'within a few standard deviations' of what he'd normally be wearing if he weren't about to be photographed. While he may not immediately appear to possess the visceral intensity of 'Severance,' the discombobulating drama in which he plays Dylan G., an office worker who, like some others, has been split into two different people, Cherry has a resolute drive beneath his easygoing surface. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
