Monday, 4 October 2021, Shaftesbury Theatre, London
It's been a couple of years since & Juliet officially opened in London's West End. It's been a show on my theatre 'watch list', so to speak, since it opened but, due to final year uni commitments and then Covid coming along, I was unable to go and see it, until a couple of weeks ago on my birthday trip to London.
Some of my OG blog readers will probably already know this, but I'm a really big theatre fan - and I often liken the experience of going to the theatre to that of going to a gig; for a couple of hours, nothing else in the world matters. It completely pulls you in, and I'm a firm believer that there's no better feeling than that.
& Juliet opened in November 2019, and the plot revolves around Anne Hathaway, William Shakespeare's wife, attending the premiere of Shakespeare's play Romeo & Juliet and realising that the ending was not what she had hoped. Anne persuades her husband to let her rewrite the play - the end result being & Juliet, where Juliet doesn't kill herself when Romeo does.
The play within a play begins, and Anne takes Juliet, her bold, non-binary best friend May and Nurse on a 600 mile road trip from Verona to Paris. In Paris, there are revelations, love triangles, and a huge twist before the interval in which a character that nobody expects to appear, appears.
Full of Max Martin's greatest hits (think Britney, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson and more), the show has the soundtrack of dreams, and the production of the show is fantastic. The plot has some holes, don't get me wrong, but the show is a hilarious, refreshingly modern take on a tragedy we all know so well - and the feminist themes are massively welcomed by me.
I'll be honest, I was cringing hard at some parts of the show, but I quite like that. I like something a bit cringey, like a guilty pleasure, so that doesn't bother me too much. To be honest, if it weren't for the talent of the incredible cast, the show would probably feel more like The X Factor, or Britain's Got Talent, but it didn't. And, for that, the cast deserve huge credit. Special shout out goes to Miriam-Teak Lee (Juliet), Cassidy Janson (Anne) and Alex Thomas-Smith (May).
Would I see it again? You know what, I probably would. And I know for a fact my Mum definitely would. It's the perfect light-hearted, fun, silly show, and it gets a solid 4 star rating from me.
Comments
Post a Comment