They Should’ve Been at the Club

After curtain call for Gen Z “Romeo + Juliet” previews on Broadway, Maya Chen finds that departing the theater is such sweet sorrow.

By Maya ChenOctober 30, 2024

ROMEO + JULIET, Circle in the Square Theatre, New York, October 19, 2024.

She wears Docs, he wears Salomons, and the poison is a pill swallowed via borg. I’m thrilled and a little abashed to announce that I saw the new Broadway production of Romeo + Juliet—branded a little too cutely as R + J—in previews at the Circle in the Square, and actually loved it.

Promoted with the preening tagline “THE YOUTH ARE F**KED” and a terribly 2013ish website, R+J has intrigued me from the moment I saw the casting (Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, practically—and perhaps literally—engineered to court teen stans), the 2024 setting, and the poster’s very prominent “MUSIC BY JACK ANTONOFF.” For these reasons, as well as director Sam Gold’s pitch being “‘Romeo and Juliet’ if it was set in Troye Sivan’s ‘Rush’ music video,” I had strong suspicions that the show might be insufferable, developed by Gen Xers with the same semi-embarrassing grip on “internet culture” as the New York Times Style Desk. As I descended into the neon red–lit theater and saw the stage covered in huge teddy bears and a Hello Kitty backpack, the cast costumed like they were going to Futch Night at El Cid, I knew I was at least a little right.

I opened my playbill to find a card that, on one side, taught the audience how a Broadway show works: i.e., there’s an intermission and you can’t go on your phone. On the other side was a breakdown of who’s who in Romeo + Juliet, photos attached, in case you didn’t already know who Romeo and Juliet are. These provisions, plus the narrator (Gabby Beans, triple-cast) occasionally breaking the fourth wall to say things like “Remember what Rachel said in the prologue,” underlined the kind of audience the show was expecting: a very online, lightly illiterate population that was fully unaware of the basic plot of Shakespeare’s most famous play.

The target audience was certainly there; when Juliet drank the poison, a girl in the front row was visibly shocked and mouthed a silent “NO.” Like, girl … yes! And yet—despite my misgivings—when actually watching the production, I couldn’t stop thinking about another quote Gold shared with Zegler: “13-year-olds are way older than they used to be.” Throughout the show, I couldn’t help being struck by how young the cast looked—with the ways they danced, lounged, played, and fought together, I was reminded time and again that these are just kids.

I thought the production would be a cringe attempt to seem “cool” and “edgy” to the youth, much like my high school’s 1980s-punk rendition of Sweeney Todd, but I honestly enjoyed feeling like I was at the club. It was fun! Antonoff’s synthy score, alongside the very modern delivery, reminded me how genuinely timeless Shakespeare is, something I’m often told but rarely feel. The production was surprisingly funny; an annoyed “go, girl” from Tommy Dorfman’s gossipy diva Nurse evoked the sense that we’re probably not so different from the girls in 1597. The ensemble was deeply horny—in the fight during the first scene, the rival members punched, wrestled, and briefly made out.

The modernizing of the play worked; the addition of three random musical numbers didn’t. The songs weren’t so bad as they were pointless—why put pop songs that move plot into a production that’s proudly doing the Bard? It was annoying, especially since there were only three of them—I love musical theater, and I was waiting for it to be over.  If they wanted to do a musical, adapt it into a full musical; if they want to do original Shakespeare, just do the play. Zegler obviously has a beautiful voice, as do her fellow ensemble members (Sola Fadiran, great as both Lord and Lady Capulet, and Gían Pérez as Samson, Paris, and Peter), but they ultimately weren’t served by the singing. The only moment among the songs that worked was when Romeo first spots Juliet at the party; she’s a star, and he’s obsessed.

Zegler is precocious in a performance that emphasizes the actual tween nature of Juliet, a little girl who thinks she’s so much older. Connor is, dare I say, perfect as this production’s Romeo: puppyish, very earnest, and quick to emotion in a way that lends itself to sudden violence. The balcony scene, already illicitly recorded on TikTok, was accused of encouraging a lack of audience decorum, but Connor and Zegler played it so thrilled and self-satisfied in their own love that I couldn’t help but love it too. They’re teenagers, experiencing life the same way teenagers always have; whether their love could really be built to last isn’t the point. The production wasn’t doing anything radical, but I enjoyed myself so much that I honestly didn’t care. Can I see it again?

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Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

LARB Short Takes live event reviews are published in partnership with the nonprofit Online Journalism Project and the Independent Review Crew.