The youth are f**ked.
Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way.
Emmy Award winner Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”) and Golden Globe Award winner Rachel Zegler (Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) star as Romeo and Juliet in Tony Award-winning director Sam Gold’s (Fun Home, An Enemy of the People) visceral and visionary production. Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy now belongs to a new generation on the edge.
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 died from a lack of adult supervision.
Oh, yes, this revival does everything it can to reflect the unfortunate time in which not only the Montagues and the Capulets but we, too, are living. Somehow, it’s sad to be confronted with the news that the violence so stealthily and widely afflicting our society today has infiltrated so far as to include treating Shakespeare’s text violently.
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1869 | Broadway |
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1899 | Broadway |
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1903 | Broadway |
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1956 | Off-Broadway |
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1962 | Off-Broadway |
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1968 | Off-Broadway |
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1977 | Broadway |
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1986 | Broadway |
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1988 | Off-Broadway |
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1990 | Off-Broadway |
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1991 | Off-Broadway |
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2001 | Off-Broadway |
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2004 | Off-Broadway |
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2007 | Off-Broadway |
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2013 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2013 | Off-Broadway |
Classic Stage Company Production Off-Broadway |
2016 | West End |
Kenneth Branagh West End Revival West End |
2018 | West End |
RSC Production at the Barbican West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
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