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& Juliet Birmingham Hippodrome ***** Welcome to a show bristling with enough energy to light a modest sized city, packed with good music, a witty script and a fun storyline, all to give us a sort of Romeo & Juliet 2: from Verona to Paris. All right, we all know Shakespeare didn’t do sequels; the greatest love story ever told had our lovers united in death, the tragic victims of hatred and conflict . . . For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Curtain, applause, on to the next play. But, just for a moment, what if Shakespeare had had second thoughts, or, to be honest, more a prod from his wife to change it to a happy ending? What if Juliet, awakening to find new husband Romeo in the past tense, decided to call it a day on that relationship and move on to pastures new? Now while Shakespeare was swanning around in London knocking out his 38 plays, his wife, Anne Hathaway, was stuck at home in Stratford upon Avon bringing up their two daughters, Susanna and Judith, Judith’s twin Hamnet having died aged 11, a fact that brought a sudden shock of sadness to the otherwise fun musical. So, when Anne found a babysitter and arrived on a sort of girl’s day out during his final Romeo and Juliet rehearsals, Bill, was on a bit of a hiding to nothing, a be nice to the wife or else moment. Jay McGuiness is a wonderful Shakespeare, with some lovely gestures and asides while Lara Denning is a perfect foil as Anne, sassy, independent yet vulnerable and sad, and what a voice. There are plenty of good songs in there but she smashes it with Céline Dion’s That's The Way It Is making it the real showstopper.
Gerardine Sacdalan as Juliet with Lara Denning as Anne, who is playing Juliet's friend April in her version of . . . it's complicated . . . So, under protest Shakespeare lets Juliet survive in Anne’s revised version, but, you only need to look at the cast list to find he gets his own back by bringing Romeo back to miraculous life - Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war as Shakespeare might have put it. So, the love story is on again, and not only that, we get three more love stories, that’s 400 years of romantic inflation for you. First are our inevitable star cross’d lovers with Gerardine Sacdalan as a simply superb Juliet, feisty, finding an independent streak, and with a voice and a half. No wonder Romeo fell for her, even arriving from New York to find her in the shape of Ben Jackson Walker who played the role on & Juliet’s Broadway premiere in 2022. He gives us a dashing Romeo with a hint of bad boy trying to be good about him. They are the reason for the story so their love affair is a given, even if it was interrupted by the odd death and another engagement . . . it’s a long story. But what about the Nurse, Angelique, from the northern district of Verona, somewhere between Manchester and Leeds perhaps, in a glorious performance from Sandra Marvin, another with a voice to die for. Marvin, incidentally, sung the title track of the film Gravity. She has wonderful timing for comedy and gives us a full of life performance as she hooks up with old flame Lance as she and Juliet flee to Paris to escape the threat of being sent to a nunnery by Juliet’s mother, Lady Capulet, a rather stern Katie Ramshaw. Lance being Ranj Singh in his first musical and doing a fine job of it, mes amis, French accent and all. He was last seen in these parts as The Spirit of the Bells in Dick Whittington at the Hippodrome in 2022.
Ranj Singh as Lance with Sandra Marvin as Juliet's nurse, Angelique Mind you the journey from Verona to Paris must have taken some time as Shakespeare was writing his play around 1595 and by the time they got to Paris the Eifel Tower, Moulin Rouge and Metro were all up and running . . . just saying. Finally, we have Lance’s son François, a shy and confidence lacking figure in the hands of Kyle Cox. Lance is trying to get him married off but François is shy around girls . . . well around anyone really, but his life is set to change when he meets May by chance and . . . May, played by Jordan Broatch, is Juliet's best friend, and May is a character trying to find himself or perhaps herself in a confusing world, singing Britney Spears’ I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman with real feeling. Around our lovers are a brilliant ensemble, Shakespeare’s company of players, bringing Jennifer Weber’s equally brilliant choreography to sparkling life as well as acting as stage hands to keep the action flowing without a hitch. The rear of the stage is a giant video screen with always intriguing and interesting images and animations from Andrzej Goulding with added interest from Howard Hudson’s magical lighting plot, a five star performance on its own, enhancing Soutra Gilmour’s spectacular and deceptively simple set. Technically this is a jukebox musical but to be fair this is no cram as many songs in as you can popfest, the numbers are selected with real purpose, even with comedy or irony in mind at times, they are part of the story, moving things on, with numbers from Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and on and on with Bon Jovi’s anthem It’s My Life a rousing end to act one and Justin Timberlake’s Can't Stop the Feeling! as the finale. Each song is reinterpreted to fit in with the emotions and situations of the characters for example Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time is a fairly standard break up song but sung by Juliet in the tomb over her dead husband it is treated as a song of grief, repurposed with deeper meaning. A remarkably clever piece of work from Swedish hit machine songwriter Max Martin, the writer involved in all the songs, including the only original song in the mix, One More Try. He has adapted his music and lyrics around an inventive book by David West Read and let’s not forget the role of Shakespeare in this, the creator of the Everyman of love stories adaptable to any conflict or scenario. & Juliet is not the first hit musical version to have Juliet surviving, Maria grieved the death of her Tony in West Side Story back in 1957, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein Tony award winning reworking of the love story and a version which changed the face of musicals for ever. The singing throughout is first class from a wonderful cast and behind it all, off stage, is an outstanding six piece band under musical director Marcus Carter-Adams who add a pop vibe to musical theatre class, with one caveat. Opening night saw weapons grade bass, shaking the walls, thumping the chest, it even drowned out Juliet singing Katy Perry’s Roar. At times it was uncomfortable and felt way out of balance with otherwise excellent music. Perhaps first night over, it might be worth a look at. Bass apart this is an excellent new musical, a coming of age of the Jukebox genre, reworking original songs to give new meaning with themes of relationships and love in all its forms, inclusivity and acceptance, finding oneself, empowerment, embracing choice and seeing a story not as it is but how you want it to go, as with the uneven marriage of William and Anne. Directed by Luke Sheppard Juliet . . . & Romeo will be the star cross’d lovers at the Hippodrome to 03-05-25. Roger Clarke 22-04-25 Jay McGuinness’s Shakespeare claims responsibility for no end of words and phrases throughout & Juliet, in reality Shakespeare either created or popularised some 2,000 words into the English language from assassination to zany, and gave us hundreds of familiar phrases we still use every day some 400 years on. |
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