Romeo + Juliet
Opening Night: October 24, 2024
Theater: Circle in the Square
Website: romeoandjulietnyc.com
Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way.
Emmy Award winner Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”) and Golden Globe Award winner Rachel Zegler (Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) star as Romeo and Juliet in Tony Award-winning director Sam Gold’s (Fun Home, An Enemy of the People) visceral and visionary production. Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy now belongs to a new generation on the edge. BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
October 24, 2024
Is that a reasonable response to aim for when staging the world’s most famous weepie? For me, seeing so many young people engaged, it is. Perhaps, as Shakespeare commands in the play’s closing speech, they will “Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.” And so what if the production achieves that goal by protecting them from too much unruly feeling, just as the Capulets aimed to protect Juliet? Probably, the Capulets were right.
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October 25, 2024
“Romeo + Juliet” is still telling the Bard’s old story with its old bones, but this production really is the fresh voice it markets itself to be. Gold’s specific convictions are vague, but the story he’s retelling remains captivating, fun and, eventually, even gutting. It will find its audience of young, queer, passionate kids because it opted to become them.
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October 24, 2024
Alas, while the two leads are sincere, the show itself is (a) altogether too much of too much; (b) a bit of an ill-focused mess; and (c) less than engrossing.
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October 24, 2024
Gold’s revival fully commits to its concept and sustains it surprisingly well. Traditionalists might shudder at the way some of the verse is delivered, but if you’re willing to take it on its own terms, this R+J is an infectious emotional rollercoaster.
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October 24, 2024
Once the audience has become accustomed to the playful, cool mood that extends into the chic lobby, they await the, er, tragedy to unfold. On that end, “Romeo + Juliet” is a let-down. During the dark final moments in the crypt, or wherever the heck they are, the play peters out. The best bits are specks in the rearview; the sadness, less powerful than the booming tunes from two hours earlier.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
He occasionally achieves something gorgeous and intimate, thanks in large part to the white-hot chemistry of his two leads. But for slightly older audiences, now nursing heartburn more often than heartbreak, you’ll likely just feel exhausted.
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October 24, 2024
Connor, Zegler and a cast that also includes Gabby Beans, Tommy Dorfman, Daniel Bravo Hernández and others are engaging from beginning to end.
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October 24, 2024
Unfortunately, the production’s rave-like, nihilistic drive does little to make up for its lack of clarity or a pulse.
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October 24, 2024
One could be forgiven for walking away from this show’s two (and a half) hours’ traffic thinking that maybe Romeo and Juliet is kind of mid after all. Such is the enervating effect of so aggressively clickbaity and uncurious a production.
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October 24, 2024
Although the production has a heartbeat, it’s missing a heart… When he kills Tybalt in revenge, the moment is empty of real feeling. In the moments after that — when he’s exiled and so must leave his love; when he discovers Juliet is dead; etc. — there is no heartbreak at all. There’s not a wet eye in the house.
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October 24, 2024
This production seems intent on appealing to TikTok audiences who don’t know much about the play going in, which is a laudable goal, and I think it will succeed. But those newcomers may be surprised to find that what they thought was a tragedy about young people crushed by societal constraints is actually the sad tale of two nice kids who died from a lack of adult supervision.
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October 24, 2024
It’s all a very pleasant surprise that this Romeo + Juliet is more akin to Skins – the British series whose impact we must not let be forgotten – than expected: wildly enjoyable, acutely contemporary, potently acted, and often surprisingly revealing.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
Looking back on his Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, I’d say Gold has a mixed track record with the major tragedies (watch out, Titus!). This one I’ll remember fondly.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
The whole thing is undeniably entertaining, but the additions of Antonoff’s songs, Sonya Tayeh’s choreography, and intermittent modern slang don’t serve the play as much as they feel like empty spectacle, inserted out of fear its target audience — short-form TikTok devotees, per the stereotypes of us Gen Z-ers — won’t otherwise stay engaged for 2.5 hours.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
My inner English teacher is grateful to director Sam Gold for drawing a younger crowd (voluntarily, eagerly!) to Shakespeare. The production sometimes thrilled my outer theatergoer too. Sometimes, but not always.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
The most gorgeous moments in this Romeo + Juliet are the simplest, when all the noise falls away and it’s just Connor and Zegler: their first meeting, when they spontaneously proclaim their love in a shared 14-line sonnet; the famous Act 2 balcony scene, a positively swoon-worthy moment that no future production should ever attempt to re-create; their too-brief moment of post-wedded bliss.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
How does he fool with The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the extent that for much of it he seems to be helming The Comedy of Romeo and Juliet? Gold bombards the audience with a reworking short on poetry and long on physical and vocal horseplay.
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
More often than not, it irks, like an overly enthusiastic theater teacher straining to get equally enthusiastic kids interested in the classics via whatever means necessary, be it overt eroticism, Doc Martens, a couple of mid original pop songs by Antonoff, or the jarring presence of the TikTok binge drinking phenomenon known as a Borg (Blackout Rage Gallon).
READ THE REVIEWOctober 24, 2024
The stellar production — which sees many of its cast, including its two leads, making their Broadway debut — succeeds in threading the needle between two nearly impossible tasks that come with putting on Romeo + Juliet: retaining the play’s original language and message while simultaneously putting one’s own stamp on the material, and, perhaps most importantly, making a more than 420-year-old play both accessible and enticing for the teens it is representing onstage.
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