Today is Sunday, November 17, 2024. I took a one-day hiatus from this blog yesterday when I went to Times Square to see a play with Elliot’s blessing. The reason for this was to just clear my head of all the drama arising from the nightmare of the election on November 5, a day that will live in infamy, in my mind. I got on line around 3, and I waited about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the ticket booth. I couldn’t understand the long wait, considering the lines weren’t that long, but when I finally got to the ticket booth, I noticed there were fewer cashiers this time which could explain the slower time. I decided to see & Juliet, a musical, which is not my usual cup of tea, so to speak. But this time I desired to see a musical to distract me from the coming Apocalypse.

Anyway, this enjoyable play was about two and a half hours of raucous distraction featuring the myriad songs of Max Martin, who is credited with producing this century’s most enduring pop anthems, along with the likes of such superstars as Katy Perry, NYSC, Britney Spears, Pink, Celine Dion, and a host of others. They all figure in this imaginative retelling of one of Shakespeare’s enduring tragedies, Romeo and Juliet, in which the wife of the old bard, Anne Hathaway (Alison Luff), fights with her prolific husband in order to rewrite the play in which Juliet lives instead of dies, alongside her young lover, Romeo. Anne desires to rewrite the play in which the heroine lives and is able to embark on her own journey of self-discovery. So instead of dying on a dagger, here Juliet (Maya Boyd) learns that her beloved slept with many other women, so she runs away to Paris with her faithful nurse, Angelique (Jeannette Bayardelle), and immediately is swept up into another whirlwind romance with young Francois (Makai Hernandez). Things soon get complicated when Juliet’s good friend and confidante, May (Michael Ivan Carrier), who is nonbinary, is attracted to Francois as well. Also, Romeo (Liam Pearce) himself arises from the dead before the end of Act I to complicate matters even more.

The strongest element of the play, I feel, is the perfect melding of the pop songs with what’s going on with the characters. The songs are used very deftly, humorously, and quite unexpectedly, like when May sings plaintively the Britney Spears song, “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” to convey their true feelings about their self. The tunes feel fully integrated with the scenes and true to the characters. The only quibble I had was the ear-thrashing the audience got with the volume at ear-shattering decibels. The volume was a little over the top, in my opinion. The choreography by Jennifer Weber was not too original, either. There weren’t many good tap dancing moves thrown into the mix, just a lot of jerky arm movements. The Parisian setting was quite lackluster, unfortunately, as there was an anachronistic Eiffel Tower miniature (the tower wasn’t around in Shakespeare’s time), a Moulin Rouge windmill (also anachronistic), and a Metro sign (which also wasn’t around during the time of Shakespeare). The scenic design was courtesy of Soutra Gilmour.

The standouts in the play include Boyd as Juliet who is transformed before our very eyes from an indecisive thirteen-year-old (here her age is changed to early 20s by Anne) to a modern, independent woman who sings the song, “Roar,” toward the end of the play and Luff as Anne Hathaway, who also transforms herself from just a lonely wife of a famously known playwright to a capable playwright of her very own of some stature who affirms equal standing before her egotistical husband. Both have powerhouse voices.

Anyway, the play delivered in terms of energy and tunefulness. At the end, Shakespeare (Drew Gehling) got everyone dancing in the aisles. You can’t criticize that, for God’s sake, now, can you?

It’s getting late, owing to Elliot and I watching an episode of Midsomer Murders tonight. It was over two and a half hours, including the damn commercials, that I zapped through. This one, I have to agree with Elliot, was a little too confusing, given so many characters and plot twists. But I eventually solved the puzzle toward the end. I’ll have to fill Elliot in tomorrow as to who was who and who was the murderer. Actually, there were two killers in this episode, not just one.

Another week before the impending storm. Try to enjoy it as much as you can.

And so it went!

Here’s what the stage looked like before the play began at 8.

Here’s the playbill.

Here are the many hits that are sung in the play by the large cast.

Here’s Shakespeare himself (Drew Gehling) who is whipping up the crowd at the end of the play, talking about Broadway Cares and its role in helping patients with AIDS.