Romeo Loves Juliet - a Musical Comedy

Romeo and Juliet Gets a Hard-Rock Makeover in New Musical Comedy

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In , Theophilus Cibber played Romeo in a version closer to the original that retained some of Otway's additions, such as Juliet waking before Romeo dies. This production boasted the unusual casting of father and daughter in the title roles — he in his early forties, she just Judging by contemporary comments, this did not go down too well with audiences.

Garrick removed many of Shakespeare's bawdy jokes and sexual references, reducing Mercutio's role and simplifying that of Juliet.

Responding to his audience's taste, he kept the tear-jerking sentimentality of the lovers' final embraces. This version of the play became the standard text for the stage over the next century.

William Shakespeare's Works/Tragedies/Romeo and Juliet

Barry was more praised as an ardent lover while Garrick was felt to be better suited to the tragic aspects of the role. Audiences could have their cake and eat it too by enjoying Barry at Covent Garden for the first half of the play before heading off to Drury Lane to see Garrick die tragically in the second. As one contemporary female theatregoer put it: Throughout the 19th century, the role of Juliet was seen as an important marker of a young actress's claim to fame.

In the midth century, actresses were also allowed a crack at the male lead, showing how Romeo was seen to lack masculinity. The most successful of these female Romeos was the American Charlotte Cushman, who, partnered by her sister, Susan, was a huge hit.

In , Henry Irving and Ellen Terry took the lead roles in a celebrated production at the Lyceum, which delighted the audience with its lavishly Italianate settings, processions and crowd scenes. The most jaw-dropping sequence saw Romeo slew Paris in the churchyard before carrying his corpse down a flight of stairs where, by virtue of a seemingly miraculous scene change, he was revealed in the gloom of a Gothic crypt.

At the end of the century, the management of the Lyceum was taken over by Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who was highly praised as a graceful and romantic Romeo in his own production of the play.

PM&L musical takes place after 'Romeo and Juliet'

The play remained very popular throughout the twentieth century. In the first decade of the century, William Poel led the Elizabethan Stage Society in its traditional staging of several of Shakespeare's plays, with a simple thrust stage for fast-paced fluid action.

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The pace and panache of John Gielgud's Romeo and Juliet in at the New Theatre made the critics take note and admire the simple Italian Renaissance setting and the excellence of the performances. Recalling the rivalry between Barry and Garrick, Gielgud gained more praise for his poetic Romeo, while Olivier's Mercutio was admired for his virile energy. In an influential production at the Old Vic in , Franco Zeffirelli used his Italian background to create a breathtakingly real atmosphere of Italian street life.

The curtain rose to reveal the housewives of Verona shaking their newly-washed sheets out from their balconies over young people chatting, flirting and fighting.

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Their naturalistic style was wholly new to London audiences. The lovers were played by the young actors John Stride and Judi Dench. Kenneth MacMillan choreographed a ballet to Prokofiev's music and this was premiered at Covent Garden in , with Rudolph Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in the title roles. Since then, it has become a much—loved part of the ballet repertoire. It was filmed in There have been many film versions of the play. Where the two houses were feuding over—the soul of rock and roll?

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This hypothetical plot begins to explain the concept of Star-Crossed , a vibrant, hilarious rock opera that fuses classic and metal hits with Shakespeare's quintessential tale of doomed love. Our Romeo Norman Grey is a naive, young angel who looks the part with his Nordic blond David Cassidy locks, white vest and sky-blue scarf. He was raised on "bubblegum heaven rock," yet longs for something different.

Enter loyal friend Mercutio Sheena Transue , who hooks him up with some heavier music and an invite to a party in the underworld. To fit in, he needs to go from dorky to edgy and begins the transformation by singing Dio's "Holy Diver. But as the song goes on, he becomes more comfortable and adds some of the band's scraping harshness to his rendition.

The metal makeover works. Romeo meets a demon girl at the party. Juliet Blair Bowmer wears a torn-up pair of fishnets that could've been stolen off the legs of a '90s grunge-era Courtney Love, and she can barely be bothered to look up from her phone.

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But the two hit it off and are secretly married. You know how the rest of the story goes. Star-Crossed is not a faithful adaptation of Romeo and Juliet , though there's an affection for the source material and even a few jokes thrown in that may yield chuckles from Shakespeare nerds. Primarily, the play is a road map to get from point A to point B while visiting musical attractions along the route. In a way, the story is the perfect framework for this kind of experiment because it's so universal.

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