Throughout the decades, the world has seen so many renditions of Romeo and Juliet that if you haven’t heard about the Shakespearean play, you never had an English teacher who was obsessed with the English playwright and made you read his work in grade school.
With Franco Zefirrelli’s first movie on Romeo and Juliet in 1968, the world is introduced to a live depiction of two teenagers, coming from two rival families, who fall in love and choose death because of their unwillingness to be separated. It’s the perfect tragedy, where two families end up with a great loss, showcasing the intensely teenage emotional experience that Shakespeare intended.
Zefirrelli’s Romeo and Juliet stars two random, normal teenagers who were taken out of their real classrooms and were given the duty to represent the typical teenager’s unpredictability.
Now, after 56 years, Romeo and Juliet is brought up to the 21st century. This time, we are not talking about two normal teenagers who are learning how to act. We are talking about two celebrities from different sides of Hollywood who are tasked to give Romeo and Juliet relevance again in this post-pandemic era ruled by TikTok trends and short attention spans.
Rachel Zegler, who plays Juliet Capulet in the Broadway adaptation directed by Sam Gold, had her Hollywood breakout in West Side Story but, most people know her for her role as Lucy Gray in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Kit Connor, also known as Nick Nelson in Netflix’s acclaimed show Heartstopper, plays Romeo Montague.
From their first promotion for the show in early May, the fans already knew this was going to be worth watching and the stealer-show among Broadway musical talent in the fall.
And the cherry on top, Jack Antonoff produced all the music. They really said, “Bring on the Swifties.”
With this cast in mind, you are bringing together the young people whose formative years were the dystopian literature and filmography where Suzanne Collins and Jennifer Lawrence took over Tumblr.
Also, they are making sure to merge the audience who has been following Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper graphic novels and their Netflix adaptations since 2022.
Two celebrities who were born from literature pieces that made it to the screen are now responsible for delivering Shakespeare’s lines and portraying the intensity of the first love experience.
As soon as you enter Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, you see the smiles and excitement filling people’s faces at seeing their idols play a classical novel they have probably known since they were little.
You see people in their twenties, teenagers and a few older adults. For some reason, you feel like you can relate to them. Even though they are just mere strangers in the overwhelming city of New York, you know they’re here for pop culture, they’re here for Hollywood.
I thought this show was going to be more musical-led and that they were going to throw away Shakespeare’s 15th and early 17th-century English down the drain because let’s be honest, who has the time to understand it? However, the two-hour show not only delivered the play as classical and old-school as it could be but, the songs that were implemented were strangely not superficial.
In a generation where love is a lost art and courting someone is measured on liking the person’s story on Instagram, this revival of Romeo and Juliet portrays how pure and blind first love can be. More than love, infatuation. At the end of the day, Romeo and Juliet are teenagers experiencing an overflow of emotions and hormones with little knowledge of what to do with them.
Connor and Zegler’s chemistry made this show the perfect merge of teenage romance and “Superman thinking”, a psychological term used to justify the belief that you’re invincible, untouchable and immune to consequences — when your frontal lobe is just far from being developed yet.
Witnessing Zegler’s live vocals is not something that happens every day, let alone knowing this music comes from the person who has produced Taylor Swift’s hit albums. Considering her long history of acting in musical theatre, it is no surprise that she wowed the audience as a yearning-for-freedom Juliet with raw emotional depth. Her voice carried effortlessly, soft delicate phrasing with high notes.
Although Connor did not sing as much, the only bit where he gave the audience a glimpse of his voice was when he hummed a verse of one of Juliet’s songs.
Regarding the costume design in the play, I never expected to be styled accurately to the fashion trends we have seen over the last five years, which appealed to the audience even more. Zegler’s loose-fitting cargo pants and Doc Martens boots with pink puffy hearts on the side marked her signature style throughout the play, making every young girl in the audience imagine herself getting that exact outfit the moment she left the theatre.
Considering that the 2024 fashion era consists of the peak of the 70s with Y2K-specific fashion picks combined, you can see this reflected in Connor’s Y2K black-and-white tank tops and Zegler’s flowy and halter-neck dresses.
The costume designer for Romeo and Juliet, Enver Chakartash, said in an interview for Vanity Fair that his goal for the costumes was to make the audience question their own “cool” factor. He wanted the audience to, as soon as they entered the theatre, resonate with the Gen Z-like outfits and see themselves wearing them.
Even though the show was a big promotional Hollywood campaign, they still captured Romeo and Juliet’s vivid teenage impetuosity.
“The youth are fucked” was the headline for the show’s official promotion. Perhaps if William Shakespeare were alive today, he would use those exact words when describing Romeo and Juliet’s tragic love story.
