To say the least, jukebox musicals have a checkered reputation. Theatre critics are known to loathe them for a number of aesthetic reasons, while mass audiences latch onto them with love and adoration, something that contributes to long runs on Broadway and filled theatre seats across the country on National Tours. An outlier that defies the naysayers—for the most part—would be & Juliet, currently making a notable and entertaining 8 performance National Tour stop in Knoxville at the Tennessee Theatre. Unlike other jukebox musicals, & Juliet embraces its genre and its ancestry, even welcoming its audience at each performance with a jukebox prop stage center, as if to say “This is what I am!”
However, unlike other example vehicles like Jersey Boys, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, MJ – The Musical, or even Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations, & Juliet is not a sanitized biography or pretending to be something it is not. Its musical side is an agreeable exploitation of dozens of pop tunes written by Swedish songwriter Max Martin for a dozen or so performers over the last 25 years—like Britney Spears (“Baby One More Time” and “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”), Katy Perry (“Teenage Dream” and “I Kissed a Girl”), and Backstreet Boys (“I Want it That Way”).
Admittedly, though, pop tunes alone do not a musical make, even if they inspire high energy staging that is eminently dance-able. The glue here is the intriguing book by playwright and television writer/producer David West Read that takes as its premise the loaded question “what would Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet have been like if Juliet didn’t die?”
Answering that question moves the show from cotton candy to a well-considered roller coaster, with Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway (a delightfully snarky Crystal Kellogg) showing up as a foil and frustrated critic of the Bard, insisting on driving a re-write, all the while inserting herself into the action along with Will Shakespeare (a comically commanding CJ Eldred). Of course, with so much pop diva music, it is natural—and fun—that the book turn pro-woman—and all that entails—including Juliet’s (Fabiola Caraballo Quijada) song-driven ambitions and missteps, Shakespearean marital tensions, mismatched and reunited lovers, and the complications and twists of gender issues. The subplot of Lance (Paul-Jordan Jansen and Juliet’s nurse Angelique (K Allison) was an unexpected plus.
When Read jumps the action from fair Verona to Paris, Anne’s re-write now includes a distraction and romance for Juliet in the form of Lance’s son, François du Bois (Noah Marlowe). Will has different ideas for “Frankie” as it turns out, who finds a connection on the dance floor with someone else—May (Nico Ochoa).
Director Luke Sheppard has responded to the premise with a satisfying ebb and flow of pace and energy, having a respect for the quiet moments as much as the electrifying, confetti shooting glitzy ones. His creative colleagues deserve kudos for resisting the temptation for excess: costumes by Paloma Young; a set with a thousand visual metaphors by Soutra Gilmour; lighting by Howard Hudson. The voice reinforcement (sound design by Gareth Owen) has a hard processed edge that worked strangely in the Tennessee Theatre.
Interestingly, & Juliet proves that jukebox musicals do not have to be confined to the basement level of the high-rise of theatrical entertainment. Of course, in an age when every show must have a merch table, it can be difficult to say no to vehicles that challenge each other with how fast they can fill the seats with happy theatre-goers. Maybe, & Juliet thinks, we could have both.
