Venue: Shaftesbury Theatre
Website
Max Martin has written about a million songs that you know and love. He’s won five Grammys, and penned pop anthems across the last three decades – from Baby One More Time and Oops I did It Again, to Since U Been Gone, Roar, Everybody (Backstreet’s Back), Love Me Like You Do and Can’t Feel My Face.
Those songs are all featured in new stage musical & Juliet at the Shaftesbury Theatre, but the show is far from just another jukebox musical. Firstly the songs are brilliant rearranged (orchestrations are by Tony & Grammy Award winner Bill Sherman) to give you unexpected and crowd-pleasing reinventions of the songs you know backwards.
Secondly, there’s a great story, asking what if Juliet decides to choose her own fate? And what if she gets over Romeo by running off to Paris with her best friends and Nurse on a whirlwind trip of romance, self-discovery and partying?
Finally, the cast knocks it out of the park! Miriam-Teak Lee as Juliet is an actual, proper revelation, with a voice to rival the greats and stage presence you could lacquer and wall mount. She is joined by a stellar cast including Oliver Tompsett as William Shakespeare, and Cassidy Janson as Anne Hathaway.
The show won 3 Olivier Awards and the rest of the creative team is hard-hitting, with a story by David West Read, writer and executive producer of Schitt’s Creek, and direction by Luke Sheppard (In The Heights).
This show is a riot of colour, music and fun, but also manages to be though-provoking in ways most musicals aren’t. Special mention to the relationship between Francois and May, Juliet’s non-binary friend. Arun Blair-Mangat’s rendition of “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” is beautiful to behold.
Website & BookingVenue Information
Area: Central London - Soho & West End210 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8DP
Underground & Trains: Holborn (Central line, Piccadilly line), Tottenham Court Road (Central line, Northern line), Covent Garden (Piccadilly line)
Buses: 8, 10, 14, 19, 22A, 22B, 24, 25, 29, 38, 40, 55, 73, 134, 176
