‘& Juliet’: 5 things we loved about the hit jukebox musical

Here are five things we enjoyed about the hit Broadway jukebox musical Juliet which runs through June at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco It returns to the Bay Area in the fall for a run Oct - at San Jose s Center for the Performing Arts See broadwaysf com and broadwaysanjose com respectively for tickets and more information The musical mix Majority of jukebox musicals draw from just one artist think Jersey Boys The Four Seasons Mama Mia ABBA A Beautiful Noise Neil Diamond Tina Tina Turner etc But Juliet pulls from the chart-topping songbook of Swedish hitmaker Max Martin which translates to a night of music from the Backstreet Boys Pink Britney Spears Justin Timberlake and other pop music icons of the s and s Rewriting a classic We all know the story of the two doomed young lovers in Romeo Juliet Well David West Read an Emmy award-winning writer and executive producer for the popular comedy series Schitt s Creek decided to flip the script and see what might happen if one of those lovers Juliet indeed survived the climax of arguably the the majority famous romance of all time It s an incredibly clever setup delivered at the start of the musical which propels all of the action and adventure to come Will and Ann It s Ann Hathaway Shakespeare s wife played by NorCal native Teal Wicks who really has the difficulty with the way Romeo and Juliet originally ends So she proposes and really commandeers the rewrite in favor of Juliet finding her way in a post-Romeo world The constant bickering between Will and Ann over the direction of the play is several of the freshest and funniest to be revealed in the musical Shakespeare s ego A multitude of of the night s best moments come courtesy of the Bard s gigantic ego as he embraces the redundancy of quoting himself to prove his own points underscores various of the now-popular sayings that he first coined and in general has a really hard time believing that anyone could have better ideas than his own Related Articles Bay Area arts great shows and concerts to catch this weekend How Juliet brings the Bard to Britney Spears Bay Area events calendar for July weekly editions Playful People goes from Moana to Wonka for th season Review Here s how TheatreWorks made a classic story even better Webb and company The whole cast is terrific and incredibly talented in the vocal realm but the star of the show fittingly is original Broadway cast member Rachel Simone Webb in the role of Juliet Webb grew up intonating in church and she still brings a sense of that glorious gospel to the Max Martin pop hits she covers on the stage Her background includes touring as a guest vocalist with Kristin Chenoweth