Review: & JULIET AND WEST SIDE STORY At The Ohio Theatre

As the audience was filing out of WEST SIDE STORY Feb. 14 at the Ohio Theatre, few noticed a wall of brown boxes bearing the programs for & JULIET, yet another retelling of Shakespeare’s ROMEO AND JULIET. Conversely, when crowds arrived for the opening of & JULIET on Feb. 18, posters for WEST SIDE STORY were still hanging up outside the theater.

Judging by ticket sales, Columbus can’t get enough of the various forms of this iconic Shakespearean tragedy. The four-show run of WEST SIDE STORY sold out every night and the six-show run of & JULIET has been selling well. Yet the two shows couldn’t be more different.

The story of two star-crossed lovers is like Play-Doh. It can be shaped and reformed into many different objects but, in the end, it is the same material. Hollywood has learned that lesson easily. Set it in a shopping mall in the 80s, ROMEO AND JULIET becomes VALLEY GIRL. Add gnomes and an Elton John soundtrack and it transforms into GNOMEO AND JULIET. Mix in zombies and you have WARM BODIES.

Broadway has also taken its shots with the Shakespearean classic. Move ROMEO AND JULIET from Verona to 1950s Manhattan and serve it with healthy dollops of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and ballet and presto, it’s WEST SIDE STORY. Take away a suicide and mix in pop hits and you have & JULIET.

& JULIET, which runs through Feb. 22 at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State Street in downtown Columbus) requires a suspension bridge of disbelief. Swedish pop music maestro Max Martin, and Schitt’s Creek writer David West Read imagine a world where Juliet decides not to join the suicide pact with Romeo. In this 2019 reinvention of the Bard’s masterpiece, Shakespeare (Corey Mach) and his neglected wife Anne Hathaway (Teal Wick) wrestle for the remote control of the fate of Juliet (Rachel Simone Webb).

After hearing her husband’s ghastly plans for a double suicide at the end of the play, Hathaway rewrites it to address what would happen if Juliet decides not to kill herself. The musical then ladles out a large dose of Martin-composed pop songs from the likes of Britney Spears, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and Bon Jovi to complete the story.

Juliet (Rachel Simone Webb) discovers at the funeral of Romeo (Michael Canu) that her late boyfriend had a vast array of people he swore by the ‘yonder blessed moon’ to love. After her parents threaten to send Juliet to a nunnery, she heads off to a Renaissance party in Paris, befriends Francois DeBois (Mateus Leite Cardoso), and has a host of adventures. All the while, Shakespeare schemes to sabotage the rewrites with his own twists, including a resurrection of Romeo. “If you can bring back Juliet, I should be able to bring back Romeo from the dead,” he tells his wife.

Webb is a force to be reckoned with as she rips her way through an onslaught of 1990s-2010s pop hits. After she befriends Francois, (who she keeps calling Franky DeBoys), she discovers her new suitor passed out in the back of a carriage. Thinking he too has died, Webb recoils in horror and breaks into Spears’ “Oops, I Did It Again.”  

Webb’s powerhouse vocals and energy are matched by her comedic timing. Francois sees a quickie wedding as a way to circumvent various parental threats, but Juliet is having “nun” of it. (Shakespeare loves his puns.)

When Juliet explains she’s just getting out of a bad relationship, Francois asks, “How long were you two together?” She responds, “Four days … but it didn’t end well.”

Canu is perfect as a dimwitted, shameless, and recently resurrected Romeo. When Romeo tries to win back Juliet’s hand, Hathaway suggests he do it in his own voice. Romeo stumbles, “Let me speak … words … with my own mouth.” Hathaway looks over at Shakespeare and says, “Maybe you should help him out.”

While many characters, the Nanny (Kathryn Allison), Lance (Paul-Jordan Jansen), and May (Nick Drake) in particular, produce laughs, it is Wicks and Mach who give the show its soul. Both get their fair share of snorts from the audience. When Shakespeare asks his wife why she changed Juliet’s age to her 20s, Hathaway responds, “Because I’m not going clubbing with a 14-year-old.”

However, no one in & JULIET wrings out the emotions better than Wicks and Mach. At times it seems like their relationship is struggling far more than any one of Juliet’s. Wicks captures Hathaway’s feelings of bitterness, abandonment, and jealousy. That elevates the show high above a sappy retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

Credit that to Read’s script. Read, who captured an Emmy as the Executive Director for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2020 as a Schitt’s Creek writer, takes on real issues of female empowerment, and acceptance of others without being too saccharine or heavy handed.

What & JULIET does better than most non-biographical jukebox musicals is placing the right song in the right place. At times, MAMMA MIA and WE WILL ROCK YOU seem to shoehorn in the ABBA or Queen catalogue flimsily into the plot. Martin, whose list of 27 number-one singles is second to only Paul McCartney (32), has a vast library of songs to choose from and Read picks his shots very carefully.

For example, Romeo demands to know how could she be getting married again so quickly after his death? Without missing a beat, Juliet responds in song, “Here’s the thing … we started out friends” from Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.”

& JULIET is a lot like SIX, a musical about the six wives of Henry VIII. It’s fun, engaging, and if English classes were more like this, not many students would dread reading ROMEO AND JULIET.

*WEST SIDE STORY offers a much different take on the age-old story than & JULIET. The musical, a combined effort of BalletMet, the Columbus Symphony, Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, and Opera Columbus, is closer to Shakespeare’s original tragedy. Its political message is just as relevant in the current climate as it was in the 1950s.

This ROMEO AND JULIET re-creation is set on the streets of NYC where the Jets, a group of low income, disillusioned white toughs are trying to hang on to “their” territory from the Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang.

At a school dance where the two gangs are preparing for war, Tony (Jadon Webster), a former Jet, spies and pines after Maria (Cecilia Violetta Lopez), the sister of Sharks leader Bernardo (Isaac Tobler). Bernardo believes his sister should stick with her own kind and sets her up with Chino (Miguel Pedroza). Similar to the Shakespearean play, Tony restrains his friend, Jets leader Riff (Taylor Harley), from attacking Bernardo. That allows Bernardo to stab him in the chest. Overwhelmed with rage and grief, Tony pursues Bernardo and kills him.

When it was first conceived, WEST SIDE STORY was a unique cocktail of star power: Bernstein’s music, Sondheim’s lyrics, Jerome Robbins’ choreography, and Arthur Laurents’ writing. Similarly, this amazing production brought together the singing talents of Opera Columbus, the power of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and the artistry of BalletMet and CAPA. All of those talents were woven together to produce something magical. The city should strive to recreate this formula again and again.

Lopez does a magnificent job of navigating Maria through a web of emotions. In the span of two acts, Lopez captures the giddiness of falling in love in her duet with Webster in “Tonight” and the excitement of planning to elope in “I Feel Pretty.” To watch that contentment crumble when she finds out her true love has killed her brother is heartbreaking.

Despite the connection between Webster and Lopez, the show wouldn’t work without Jenisha Cavazos (Anita), Harley, Tobler and Pedroza. Cavazos is electrifying in her romp through “America” and yet when her world is destroyed by the death of Bernardo, she becomes cold, calculating, and cruel. While Tobler and Harley are charismatic as warring gang leaders, Pedroza’s understated Chino is relatable and convincing as a man who lost his Best Friend in a gang fight and his girl to the man who killed him.

After Chino guns down Tony in the street, Maria wrestles away the gun and screams, “How many bullets do I have left? How many can I kill, Chino? How many? And still have one bullet left for me?"

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