Review | ‘& Juliet’ is pop king Max Martin’s latest guaranteed hit

Over two dozen pop hits, wildly impressive vocals, loads of groan-worthy gags, glitz for days — and so much confetti!

The musical “& Juliet,” now playing at the Princess of Wales Theatre, fully commits to the task of entertainment. It’s fun to the point of exhausting and a surefire audience hit. Its world-premiere U.K. production, which opened in 2019, is still running in London, and this Toronto staging moves to Broadway in the fall.

The first part of the show’s clever premise that it’s built around the musical catalogue of Swedish pop supremo Max Martin, who wrote, co-wrote and produced some of the biggest hits of the late 1990s and early 2000s for Britney Spears, Katy Perry, ‘NSync, Kelly Clarkson and more.

The second part is that the plot is built around one of the best-known stories in world literature, updating it with a strong feminist twist and an embrace of sexual and gendered diversities.

And finally, it features multiple central characters of various ages falling in and out of love and bed.

All of this adds up to points of identification for audience members of different generations.

The book is by Canadian David West Read, who was an executive producer and writer on “Schitt’s Creek.” The musical shares that show’s sensibility — droll, campy and shot through with sweetness.

The story opens in London, as an enthusiastic group of youth in garb that’s part Elizabethan, part contemporary streetwear (Paloma Young’s costumes are consistent scene-stealers) welcome the famous playwright William Shakespeare (Stark Sands) to their midst.

In a heartbeat, Shakespeare is belting out the Backstreet Boys’ “Larger than Life” about himself, establishing the show’s knowing manner and breakneck pace.

Shakespeare’s delighted with his latest play “Romeo and Juliet,” but his wife Anne Hathaway (Betsy Wolfe) is not impressed with its sob story of an ending. She wonders what would happen if Juliet (Lorna Courtney) didn’t die and went on to have a life of her own. That story springs to life and becomes the through-line, with Anne and William both playing characters in the action and bickering on the sidelines about how it’s all playing out.

Juliet quickly establishes a posse including her nurse Angelique (the marvellous Melanie La Barrie, a holdover from the original London cast), gender-non-binary pal May (Justin David Sullivan, immensely likeable) and Anne Hathaway herself. For no good reason other than why wouldn’t they, they head to Paris and crash a party where young François (the sweet Philippe Arroyo) needs to find a wife, or else his father Lance (Paolo Szot, bringing his opera star chops to full-throttle singing) will send him off to the army. Romantic hijinks ensue not just for François, Juliet and May but also for Lance and Angelique.

The rom-com atmosphere is frothed up even further by the constant interjection of pop songs, some of which match the situation well (Juliet singing Spears’ “Oops! … I Did It Again” as she starts up a post-Romeo relationship) and some of which don’t quite, but that’s part of the fun — as in a glorious mash-up of Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and Ariana Grande’s “Break Free” sung by a post-coital Lance and Angelique, who are hardly teenagers.

Many of the numbers feature energetic, elaborate musical staging by director Luke Sheppard and choreographer Jennifer Weber, and Soutra Gilmour’s set reveals one new extraordinary hydraulic capacity after another, with characters rising from below stage through a trap door and ascending above it on a platform. Howard Hudson’s lighting adds to the live concert atmosphere, while Andrzej Goulding’s projections further enhance the environment by evoking travel and establishing locations.

The music was orchestrated and arranged for the theatrical setting by Bill Sherman and is played live by an offstage nine-member band. The balance of Gareth Owen’s sound design between vocals and instrumentation is superb.

Without giving too much away, the cleverest plot twist comes towards the end of the first act with the arrival of a character (played by Ben Jackson Walker as hilariously self-absorbed) with the capacity to further complicate and then perhaps resolve some of the romantic complications. The staging of that moment is self-consciously grandiose and explosively funny.

This is, on the one hand, a jukebox musical with a difference: while most such shows feature the work of one musical artist or group, the songs here were originally performed by a wide range of artists, offering variety. That said, Martin’s stamp is on all of them, meaning that they’re incredibly hooky but not always lyrically eloquent, and most stick to a single idea. This contributes to a sense of relentlessness; the show would benefit from some trimming of its two-and-a-half-hour (including intermission) running time.

Those moments where the pace slows down and the music goes into power-ballad mode felt like sweet respite, especially Wolfe’s powerhouse rendition of “That’s the Way it Is,” channelling the diva who made that song famous, Céline Dion.

Like Martin’s songs themselves, this show is manufactured for success, and will likely enjoy a long Broadway run as a tourist-friendly crowd-pleaser. We’re lucky to get a first look at it in Toronto — grab a few fun-loving friends (and, ideally, a few pre-show drinks) and head to the Princess of Wales for a midsummer good time.

Book by David West Read, music and lyrics by Max Martin and friends. Choreographed by Jennifer Weber, directed by Luke Sheppard. Tickets on sale through Aug. 14 at the Princess of Wales Theatre, 300 King St. W., Toronto. Tickets at Mirvish.com and 800-461-3333.

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