Broadway review by Adam Feldman
There’s a comic-relief scene at the end of Act IV in Romeo and Juliet that is nearly always cut. Juliet’s family has just discovered what they believe to be her dead body; as the musicians hired for her wedding prepare to leave, a household servant asks them for a paradoxically happy dirge: “O play me some merry dump to comfort me." Sam Gold’s new Broadway production of the play not only keeps this scene but makes it a kind of thesis statement. Breaking temporarily for a moment, the servant demands to hear “We Are Young,” a melancholic 2011 party anthem by the band Fun. “If you don’t play it,” he warns, “I will fuckin’ fight you.”
That last line is one of the show's rare departures from its 16th-century text, but it captures the spirit of Gold’s aggressively Gen Z conception of Shakespeare’s family-feud tragedy. It’s not just that “We Are Young” is modern (like this production’s costumes, sets and attitudes), or that the choice of this particular song—which was co-written by pop hitmaker Jack Antonoff, who has also composed three new songs for this production—is emblematic of the show’s referential postmodernity: As in the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film, the title is styled as Romeo + Juliet, like graffiti on a bathroom stall; its Juliet, Rachel Zegler, is best known for playing a character inspired by Juliet in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story; its Romeo, Kit Connor, has navigated a forbidden-love narrative in his Netflix series Heartstopper. It’s not even that the song’s lyrics evoke both the sense of possibility and the sense of burnout that are baked into notions of setting the world on fire and burning brighter than the sun. (“Take him and cut him out in little stars,” says Juliet. “And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun.”)
Romeo + Juliet | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
What makes “We Are Young” feel so right is more literal than all that: This Romeo and Juliet is very much about being young. The nightclubby set, by the design collective dots, includes inflatable furniture and a shopping cart full of teddy bears; costumer Enver Chakartash puts the cast in track pants, crop tops and jeans. You don’t forget, in this version, that Juliet is only 13; Zegler, who is beautiful and tiny, is believably adolescent in her excitement and impatience. (She has the romantic rebellion of someone who has been sheltered all her life.) Connor’s Romeo has a sensitive-jock wholesomeness—with his short-cropped hair, peaches-and-cream complexion and muscular biceps in sleeveless tops, he looks like a Russian gymnast—that also makes him seem less than fully formed. (When he philosophizes that “Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books / But love from love toward school with heavy looks,” you’re reminded that he’s not far from school himself.)
This version of Verona, in fact, seems to have hardly any grown-ups at all: just vaping, dancing, posturing, borg-toting, casually queer-fluid kids. In Gold’s adaptation—Michael Sexton and Ayanna Thompson are credited as dramaturgs and text consultants—the warring Montague and Capulet families are nearly all teens. Romeo’s parents have been excised from the play completely, with some of their lines assigned to younger characters; so, for the most part, has the Prince, whose failure to stop his city’s interfamily warfare earns him a share of the blame for the story’s piteous end. Juliet’s parents are played by the same actor, Sola Fadiran, and most of the other actors also play multiple roles, with varying success. Gabby Beans, persuasive as the well-meaning Friar Lawrence, doubles less effectively as a strutting Mercutio; Gían Pérez efficiently sketches Romeo’s rival Paris as a nice guy with a creepy underside, but it’s not always clear which of his three characters is which. Tommy Dorfman is enjoyable as the saucy Nurse— “I am so vexed that every part about me quivers,” she says as she fans her fanny—but insufficiently menacing as Tybalt.
Romeo + Juliet | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
If Romeo and Juliet stand out in this production, it’s partly because what surrounds them is often a blur. Aside from some besotted verse from the star-crossed stars, what you’re likely to take away are Antonoff’s songs—it makes sense that Romeo would fall for Juliet when he sees her singing onstage, with the allure of a pop idol—and a few moments of scenic beauty: a bed that floats from the ceiling, on which Connor does a pull-up; a floor that folds up into a bed of flowers; a giant teddy bear in which the methed-out Apothecary hides his deadliest toxins.
Gold’s in-the-round staging makes dynamic use of side areas, including the aisles and the catwalk above the stage, but the environment it creates is hermetic. There’s little sense of a Verona beyond this Instagrammable party space—or of its rules. And ultimately, I think, that undermines the play; it accentuates the role of simple bad luck in Romeo and Juliet’s fate, and detracts from the larger point. This production seems intent on appealing to TikTok audiences who don’t know much about the play going in, which is a laudable goal, and I think it will succeed. But those newcomers may be surprised to find that what they thought was a tragedy about young people crushed by societal constraints is actually the sad tale of two nice kids who die from a lack of adult supervision.
Romeo + Juliet. Circle in the Square Theatre (Broadway). By William Shakespeare. Directed by Sam Gold. With Kit Connor, Rachel Zegler, Gabby Beans, Tommy Dorfman, Sola Fadiran, Gían Pérez. Running time: 2hr 30mins. One intermission.
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Romeo + Juliet | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
