Sam Gold’s new production of Romeo and Juliet featuring a predominantly Gen Z cast puts a modern spin on a classic tale, finding a unique balance between exploring youth and mental health.
Last week Sam Gold’s production of Romeo + Juliet opened on Broadway at the Circle and the Square Theater in New York City. The production, led by actors Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler, challenges the original source material in a fresh way, adding songs written by Jack Antonoff, and innovating performance by utilizing hanging platforms, the catwalk, and the audience as part of the stage.
I was lucky enough to see the production a few weeks ago in previews, and as a theater lover and self-proclaimed Shakespeare expert, wanted to give my comprehensive review.
First things first, the casting for this production was immaculate. Heavy emphasis was placed on procuring a cast that are members of Gen Z, so the story felt like it was being told by the people it is about and for. In addition, Gold didn’t appear to have the intention of casting the characters by race, which I think made the piece even more powerful. Not only is this a group of young people, but it's also a group of young people who look the way Britain and America (the places the cast are from) look today: diverse.
Even more strikingly, Gold chose to cast an older Juliet than Romeo. Rachel Zegler, who got her big break at 17 when she was cast in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story”, is now 23: three years older than her co-star. Kit Connor is now 20, but has been acting since he was little, and is most known for his role in “Heartstopper”, where he plays 16-year-old bi-sexual schoolboy Nick Nelson. The pair have the same age gap as the original characters, but age them up from middle/high school age to college students, letting the dark themes of the play breathe and feel more complex. It also flips the power dynamic between the two, turning Romeo into a love-sick puppy dog trailing after Juliet, instead of Juliet being a 13-year-old getting swept up by an older boy.
Photo curtesy of @rachelzegler on Instagram
Driving home this unique characterization of the show’s leads, the production focuses on themes of mental health in a way no production or adaptation I’ve seen has done. Although Romeo and Juliet is a romance and often emphasizes that element, this production dares us to focus on the true horrors of the text. At its core, the show is a story of two kids who ultimately commit suicide, which is often brushed over in favor of the love story. But this production dares us to look closer, seeing the truth of what today's youth are facing in the current mental health epidemic in America. It no longer becomes some old fantasy where you believe the ending could have been changed if the characters had stopped being so silly and dramatic. Instead, it mirrors the darkness of reality.
Kit Connor’s performance sold me on the show’s entire concept. I was worried that the modernization of the text through costume would feel gimmicky and inauthentic, taking me out of the material I know so well instead of pulling me in deeper. Instead, Connor serves as an anchor, making the modern setting and costumes believable because of how he complicates and works through Romeo’s character.
Photo curtesy of @broadway.com and @romeojulietnyc on Instagram
The choices both Romeo and Juliet make to end their lives in other productions can feel meaningless and unexplainable. Why are these two characters driven to suicide by their love for each other when they’ve only known each other for a week? It never quite made sense. But Connor’s Romeo is far more similar to Hamlet or even King Lear than he is to other Romeos. He is a young man struggling with his mental sanity, not only a young man in love.
We see Romeo experience euphoric highs and lows throughout the play, from his depression at the beginning because he has been rejected by another woman, Rosaline, to the happiness he feels when he falls in love with Juliet. As he ran around the entire theater, weaving through the audience and jumping up and down, I suddenly realized this was not a boy with an excited crush, it was someone having a manic episode: someone in the thralls of obsession. His mood swings made Romeo’s killing of Tybalt far more believable, and his ultimate choice to drink the poison was an inevitability instead of an accident.
Photo curtesy of @broadway.com and @romeojulietnyc on Instagram
The modern elements included also made it clear this was a production for young people, not a production trying to pander to young people while failing to understand them. Subtle details from the costumes like the use of leather, boots, and sunglasses, to having a “Borg” onstage (which Connor ultimately uses to chase down the poison like a drug in Act V), to actors vaping mid-show and the cadence of which they told jokes, all felt so true to who my generation is.
The show's tagline is “the youth are f**cked”, and it’s clear Gold went out of his way to create a production that showcased every single minuscule part of that phrase.
Header photo curtesy of @broadway.com and @romeojulietnyc on Instagram
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