& Juliet, at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre, is jukebox musical stacked with chart-toppers from one-man Swedish hit factory Max Martin.
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& Juliet
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When: Sept. 29 to Oct. 4
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Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton St., Vancouver
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Tickets: Starting from $57
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What if, instead of committing suicide at the end of Romeo and Juliet, the latter lived?
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And what if that idea occurred to not one but two sets of writers, almost simultaneously?
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Well, then you’d have both Juliet: A Revenge Comedy and & Juliet. The first, a made-in-Vancouver comedy from Ryan Gladstone and Pippa Mackie, premiered at the Winnipeg Fringe in July 2019. & Juliet followed at the Manchester Opera House on Sept. 10 — less than two months later.
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Let’s call it a cosmic coincidence. David West Read, the Canadian writer of & Juliet, hadn’t even heard of the local production until we brought it up with him. And anyway, the similarities largely end with the simple premise: Juliet lives.
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For one thing, & Juliet is a jukebox musical stacked with chart-toppers from one-man Swedish hit factory Max Martin.
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“I came up with the concept for the show,” Ontario’s Scarborough-born, Markham-raised Read said. “All the producers knew was that they wanted to do a musical using Max’s catalogue, and they had been kind of auditioning writers for the gig and hearing different pitches. The only parameters were that they didn’t want it to be the story of a boy band or the story of a pop star or something that was in the same world as the original music.”
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It occurred to Read to take Martin-penned numbers like Since U Been Gone, I Want It That Way, and Roar “as far away from the original context as possible, to a totally different time and place.”
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“So many of his songs are about heartbreak and young love, and the ultimate story of heartbreaking young love is Romeo and Juliet. So if we’re going to repurpose and reinvent all Max’s music, then maybe we can do the same thing with that story.”
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In Read’s version, Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, persuades her husband to rewrite the tragedy so Juliet doesn’t kill herself over Romeo. Newly alive and single, Juliet heads to Paris with her friends in search of a fresh start, while Shakespeare and Anne meddle with her story from the sidelines. Romantic complications ensue, accompanied by a couple of dozen Martin hits.
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Since its 2019 premiere, & Juliet has moved to London’s West End, Toronto and Broadway, where it earned nine Tony nominations, including Best Musical and Best Book for Read.
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Read was given access to Martin’s vast catalogue and quickly identified some must-use tunes, including Britney Spears’ … Baby One More Time, the 1998 smash that became Martin’s first U.S. No. 1 as a songwriter.
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Otherwise, Read says, “it was mostly story first. With the luxury of hundreds of songs, I could find something that fit the moment. But it was a little bit back-and-forth. Sometimes maybe the music led the story. Sometimes the story led the music.
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“But I set this challenge for myself — that I wasn’t going to change any of the lyrics. So it was a real puzzle to justify these pop lyrics so that they made sense in the story.”
