‘Romeo + Juliet’ Review: In New Broadway Revival, Partying Is Such Sweet Sorrow

To judge from the electric response of the youthful audience at the Sam Gold-helmed production of Romeo + Juliet, the casting of Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor as William Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers will be enough to persuade their fans that this story is dope AF. It’s not hard to imagine teens, having just watched Connor’s Romeo dangle in the air from Juliet’s suspended bed before doing a pull-up to hoist himself up to kiss her, begging their drama teachers to stage a Shakespeare tragedy this spring instead of, say, Clue.

In Gold’s previous Shakespeare outings on Broadway—2019’s Glenda Jackson-headlined King Lear and 2022’s Macbeth, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga—you really had to know the plays well to have any idea of what was going on. While critics cited the incoherence of their abstractions, I found much to relish in the productions: Weird and sometimes random as his choices seemed, the storytelling, especially in King Lear, was riveting.

There’s a similar free-associative kookiness coursing through this Romeo + Juliet (the title has been rebranded with the plus symbol, just like the Baz Luhrmann film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes). Before the production even begins, the cast gathers on stage to play catch and mess around with a shopping cart full of teddy bears. An especially gigantic teddy bear off to the side will later be stabbed and torn open to reveal the fatal vial of poison inside of it.

Most of the actors are double-and-triple cast as unconventionally as possible, including Tommy Dorfman as the Nurse and Tybalt, and lá Fádìran as both of Juliet’s parents. Gabby Beans, who has the most compelling doubling as Mercutio, Friar Laurence, and the Prince, delivers a tiny bit of additional narration, but Gold really doesn’t want to hold our hands through this. We’re going to have to figure out who’s who and what’s what on our own.

Gold’s signature strangeness basically works in the play’s first half, his choices illuminating the comedy even if his cast isn’t always up to the task of making the verse sparkle with specificity. His partnership here with the design collective dots (back together again at Circle in the Square after last season’s Enemy of the People) yields a peripatetic staging: The actors are always on the go, shimmying up and down ladders, crawling on catwalks above our heads, leaping over a sprawling pit of rose petals that opens up when Romeo declares his love. And the club atmosphere, with the pulsing bass of Cody Spencer’s sound design and Isabella Byrd’s feverish lighting, masks the underdeveloped text work: Partying is such sweet sorrow.

Connor and Zegler are broadly appealing, even if there’s not a lot happening on the level of individual lines. Language matters less than gesture here, and the chemistry between the pair, iambic pentameter aside, is palpable. Connor, star of Netflix’s Heartstopper, makes Romeo a bit too smooth a customer when the pair first meet, and Zegler, who also played a version of the role as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, fares better with grounding the verse with contemporary credibility. But in the balcony scene, let’s just say that they’ve got rizz.

Gold also leaves room for some of his supporting cast to dig deeper. The play’s opening dialogue, as it ripples into violence, is as cogent as it’s ever been, with tentative, half-playful teasing boiling into physical fighting. It only takes one teenager taking things impulsively too far for the whole situation to blow up out of control. And Beans’s wrenching version of Mercutio’s wordplay-filled death scene has a desperate generosity, as if the character is anxious to keep her friends entertained, to prevent them from panicking, even as she tries to tell them she is dying.

If only the rest of this revival was as rigorous in tying text to character. But Romeo and Juliet scarcely interact in the second half, and neither Connor nor Zegler convince as they grow increasingly tormented. The early atmosphere of storytelling in a jubilantly inclusive community gives way to a soggy sameness as the lovers trudge rather than hurtle toward their fate. Those familiar with the play may be counting down the later scenes as they tick too sleepily by, underscored with unsubtly portentous beats by Jack Antonoff. (He’s also written a couple slim songs that do little dramatically but give Zegler a chance to show off her terrific pop belt.)

And because Gold lets the initial energy and urgency go limp, he sacrifices the chance to say something 2024-ish about youth culture or the inevitable violence of tribalism, the sort of low-hanging but potent fruit that he seems to be intent on plucking early on. But just as first love can blind the smitten to obvious flaws, maybe the imperfections of first Shakespeares can be similarly ignored. Let’s hope the Bard’s new bevy of devotees are won over and here to stay.

Romeo + Juliet is now running at Circle in the Square.