United Kingdom & Juliet: Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 5.5.2025. (JPr)
After the recent disappointment of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (review here) when the company seemed to have lost half of their show enroute to Southend; the West End came in full force to the Cliffs Pavilion as & Juliet proves just the escape you might need from all the real world’s depressing headlines. ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’ is the wrong Shakespeare play but those ‘players’ brought to the ‘let’s put on a show’ backstage shenanigans of this poptastic & Juliet plenty of fun and frolics whilst addressing some very topical issues, notably gender politics. Doesn’t some of this seem rather familiar and indeed we have been there before and & Juliet is simply Kiss Me, Kate (review here) for the twenty-first century!
I am no Shakespeare and don’t have the words to do & Juliet full justice; the exchange we hear between the Bard and his wife Anne Hathaway – about his new play about Romeo and Juliet she doesn’t care for – is more like me: Shakespeare ‘I’m sorry, but the ending hath been writ’, Anne ‘I understand, but dear, the ending’s sh*t’. Anne suggests her alternative ending for his ‘pair of star-crossed lovers’ one which has Juliet forging a new life for herself and embracing a new destiny. The Shakespeares bicker constantly with Anne bemoaning her lot as an abandoned wife – in a home outside Stratford-upon-Avon – looking after their three children (though one dies young at 11) and occasionally berating him how she gets left his ‘second-best bed’ in his will. You won’t be able to answer many GCSE English Literature questions on Romeo and Juliet but you will be surprised how much you will learn about the state of Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne. Shakespeare wants to stick with his original plotting but after much persuasion proffers his quill to Anne and lets her ring her changes and shake things up quite a bit. In the end after Romeo returns from the dead (!) Juliet is able to decide on her future for herself and others are able to love whomever they want to.
One of the signature songs of Kiss Me, Kate is ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ which is chockfull of references to Shakespeare and his plays. In & Juliet these are liberally spread throughout this 2019 award-winning show that is a collaboration between the music of ‘Max Martin and Friends’ and playwright and Emmy-winning television writer David West Read. I recognised a few of Martin’s ‘dozens and dozens of hits’ (according to the programme essay) ‘for artists as different as Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, The Weekend and Britney Spears’ but not enough to make & Juliet merely a jukebox musical in its simplest sense. Though there is an actual jukebox on the stage some of the time!
The songs are artfully placed throughout the (mostly) all-singing, all-dancing concert-style extravaganza. For instance, near the beginning when Anne suggests that Juliet should not kill herself but live on, Shakespeare sings ‘I Want It That Way’ (Backstreet Boys); later in the first half when Juliet seems to race headlong into a new relationship, we get Britney Spears’s ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’; when Juliet rekindles her romance with Romeo, Anne thinks about life with Shakespeare and sings the Celine Dion anthem ‘That’s The Way It Is’; and as Juliet completes her journey of self-discovery and grasps her destiny, she sings Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’.
The songs are played, mostly in full, by a live band of 6 who truly rock. The enthusiastic, hard-working ensemble (listed as the ‘Company of Players’) is extraordinarily talented. Many of them wander onto the stage and greet the audience as some are still settling in their seats, bust out some dance moves, wave at people they appear to recognise, hold up cards to remind us to turn our phones off and seemingly have a great time before the ‘show within a show’ starts. It puts everyone in the theatre at their ease, and we already know we are in for a not-at-all serious, fun evening.
Jennifer Weber’s stylish, high-octane choreography fuses the ‘hip-hop and musical theatre dance styles’ which are very familiar from any arena show and the routines of your favourite girl or boy band or pop diva and their dancers. With hints of the ancient (well, Elizabethan!) and modern, set designer Soutra Gilmour and costume designer Paloma Young have created a setting for & Juliet that is imaginatively and visually stunning. Gilmour’s minimalistic, yet flexible stage furniture is seamlessly allied to Andrzej Goulding’s colourful, ever-changing video projection and Howard Hudson’s atmospheric lighting and is all we need to immerse ourselves in the ongoing story of & Juliet which moves from Verona to Paris. That journey is via a rickshaw ‘pulled’ by a carousel horse (actually, a tricycle)!
The entire cast are fine singers, dancers and comic actors. There is great chemistry between Matt Cardle’s stubborn, egotistical Shakespeare who is keenly aware he is only as good as his last play and Gerardine Sacdalan’s quick witted and strong-willed Anne. The two are an absolute hoot in their war of words or when popping up during Juliet’s story in a number of guises. Juliet’s nurse now becomes Sandra Marvin’s worldly-wise, wise-cracking, sassy Angelique. The convoluted plot finds Juliet and Angelique at a lavish Renaissance Ball in Paris where the wealthy Lance Du Bois (a charismatic Lee Latchford-Evans with ‘Allo ‘Allo! French accent) intends to find a wife for his much put-upon son François (the appealing Kyle Cox) who you will end up rooting for. François soon realises Juliet is not for him and finds his happy ever after with Juliet’s gender fluid, best friend May (charmingly portrayed by Jordan Broatch). François and May get to sing Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’. At one point Anne inserts herself into the story as Juliet’s second best friend April and so brings together ‘April, May and Juliet’! Meanwhile Lance and Angelique give into their feelings for each other from before when she was his children’s nurse.
What about Romeo (Benjamin Jackson Walker) you would be right to ask. Well, when he appears he is clearly not the brightest spark, something of a cocksure womaniser and distant ancestor of Grease’s Danny Zuko. How does it all end for Romeo and Juliet, well, you need to see & Juliet to find out. And I recommend you do that while you still can.
Jim Pritchard
For information about the remaining & Juliet tour dates click here.
Cast:
Juliet – Gerardine Sacdalan
Shakespeare – Matt Cardle
Lance – Lee Latchford-Evans
Anne Hathaway – Lara Denning
Angélique – Sandra Marvin
May – Jordan Broatch
François – Kyle Cox
Romeo – Benjamin Jackson Walker
Also in the cast: Harriet Caplan-Dean, Alexander Kranz, Andilé Mabhena, Liam Morris, Psalms-Nissi Myers-Reid, Michael Nelson, Toni Paise, Katie Ramshaw, Aaron Shales, Rosie Singha, Samuel Wilson-Freeman and Joe Wolstenholme
Creative:
Book – David West Read
Music – Max Martin and Friends
Director – Luke Sheppard
Set design – Soutra Gilmore
Costume design – Paloma Young
Lighting design – Howard Hudson
Sound design – Gareth Owen
Video design and Animator – Andrzej Goulding
Musical supervisor, Orchestrations and Arrangements – Bill Sherman
Musical director – Marcus Carter Adama
Choreographer – Jennifer Weber