“Oops… She Lived Again: & Juliet Remixes the Bard for the Max Martin Era”

The jukebox musical has made a conspicuous comeback on Broadway in recent years, leaning on the catalogs of artists ranging from Michael Jackson and Alanis Morissette to Jimmy Buffett and Neil Diamond—all with varying degrees of artistic cohesion and popular success. Some manage to justify their existence with a compelling narrative spine; others feel reverse-engineered around the hits.

& Juliet falls somewhere in between.

Built around the chart-dominating songbook of Swedish super-producer Max Martin, the show is essentially a glossy delivery system for some of the most inescapable pop anthems of the last 30 years. If Martin’s name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, his music certainly will. From Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys to N’SYNC, Kelly Clarkson, and Katy Perry, Martin has penned the kind of earworms that defined a generation. Chances are you’ve danced to these songs at a wedding, shouted them in your car, or at the very least bobbed your head when they came on the radio at some point in your life. That deep well of familiarity is precisely what & Juliet relies on when you take your seat at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.

To stitch the hits together, the show revisits Romeo and Juliet—or rather, imagines a meta-theatrical debate between William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, about how the tragedy should end. If you recall your high school English class, you’ll remember that Romeo, believing Juliet dead, drinks poison. Juliet awakens, finds him lifeless, and takes her own life in grief. Tragic. Final. Effective. Instead of Juliet following Romeo into death, Anne proposes a rewrite:

What if Juliet didn’t die?

That question becomes the engine of the musical. Anne proposes an alternative ending—one in which Juliet lives and charts her own course.

But in execution, the book—by David West Read, an Emmy-winning writer and executive producer of Schitt’s Creek—feels surprisingly thin and somewhat shoehorned. The narrative often seems less like an organically unfolding story and more like connective tissue designed to move us briskly from one Max Martin hit to the next. That’s not necessarily a fatal flaw for a jukebox musical, but it does leave the show feeling dramatically slight and occasionally scattered.

It’s particularly striking given Read’s pedigree. Schitt’s Creek was beloved for its razor-sharp humor, emotional nuance, and deeply earned character growth. & Juliet, though peppered with funny and heartfelt moments, rarely approaches that level of wit or cohesion. The themes—female empowerment, autonomy, self-acceptance, carving your own path—are admirable and timely, but they’re delivered with a broad, pop-inflected brush rather than with narrative depth.

And yet.

As a vehicle for Max Martin’s music, the show is undeniably effective. Judging from the audience’s reactions, it’s a massive success. The energy in the theater is electric. I found myself bopping along—and, yes, occasionally joining in on the chorus of a few of those undeniable earworms. When the familiar opening chords hit, of songs like “.Baby One More Time,” “Since U Been Gone,” “Roar,”the crowd lights up. In those moments, story almost feels beside the point.

Ultimately, & Juliet feels tailor-made for millennials, for whom these songs served as the soundtrack of adolescence and early adulthood.

The production originally premiered in 2019 in London’s West End, where it won three Olivier Awards, before transferring to Broadway in 2022, where it earned nine Tony Award nominations, winning three.

The current cast are terrific conduits for the material. Gianna Harris brings a bright, appealing presence to Juliet, grounding the spectacle with genuine charisma. Teal Wicks lends wit and authority to Anne Hathaway, elevating some of the show’s sharper meta exchanges. Michael Ivan Carrier and Nathan Levy are particular standouts, adding texture and dynamism to a production that thrives on personality as much as pop hooks.

And in a Broadway landscape crowded with adaptations and revivals, there’s something admirable about a musical that dares to remix both Shakespeare and late-’90s pop into something

Was & Juliet breathtaking? Spellbinding? Earthshattering? No—far from it. The story may be flimsy, and the book uneven. But it’s vibrant, high-energy, and consistently entertaining. Sometimes, fun is more than enough.

Queerguru’s Guest Contributor KAREEM TABSCH is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker who believes in the power of film to enrich and change lives and whose works have been official selections of Sundance, SXSW, True/False, Full Frame, HotDocs, Slamdance, AFI Docs, DocNYC, Rooftop Films, and LA Film Fest.  He is also the co-founder of  O Cinema, Miami’s premier art house cinema, heralded as helping reshape the city’s film community.