& Juliet review – pop mogul Max Martin's bizarre jukebox bonanza
Romeo and Juliet, the starting point for numerous operas, ballets and musicals, is now the inspiration – if that is the word – for this bizarre jukebox bonanza in which the back catalogue of the prolific Swedish tunesmith Max Martin, has been shoehorned into a silly story derived from Shakespeare’s play. David West Read, who did the book, writes in the programme: “It was during this period when my brain wasn’t working properly that I developed the idea for & Juliet.” I’m not sure he is being ironic.
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The show starts in London’s Shoreditch with Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, having a marital spat about the ending of his tragedy about doomed love. “What if Juliet didn’t kill herself?” asks Anne, devising a sequel in which the revived heroine defies her parents’ plan to send her to a nunnery and flees to Paris accompanied by her nurse and a non-binary best friend called May. Periodically, Shakespeare tries to retrieve a story that defies synopsis. I would add that it is odd to present Juliet as an icon of independence and then land her with jokes in which she pronounces ce soir as “Caesar” and greets a woman called Madeleine as “Vasseline.” The idiotic book is simply a way of contriving to work in such familiar chart-toppers as Baby One More Time and It’s Gonna Be Me. The one time I thought this worked was when May, played by Arun Blair-Mangat as a cross-dressing guy, sang I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.
But if tedium is kept at bay, it is largely through the noisy energy of Luke Sheppard’s production and the performances of Miriam-Teak Lee as the freedom-seeking Juliet, Cassidy Janson as the mutinous Anne Hathaway and Oliver Tompsett as her vainglorious husband. I still fail to see the point of a show like this: if the audience want to hear just the songs, why not present them in concert form? It feels gratuitous to attach them to a plot that, in its desperation to sound the right feminist notes, becomes almost painfully hip.
• At Shaftesbury theatre, London, until 30 May.
