‘& Juliet’: 5 things we loved about the hit jukebox musical

Here are five things we enjoyed about the hit Broadway jukebox musical “& Juliet,” which runs through June 27 at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. It returns to the Bay Area in the fall for a run, Oct. 7-12, at San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts. See broadwaysf.com and broadwaysanjose.com, respectively, for tickets and more information.

1. The musical mix

Most jukebox musicals draw from just one artist — think “Jersey Boys” (The Four Seasons), “Mama Mia!” (ABBA), “A Beautiful Noise” (Neil Diamond), “Tina” (Tina Turner), etc. But “& Juliet” pulls from the chart-topping songbook of Swedish hitmaker Max Martin, which translates to a night of music from the Backstreet Boys, Pink, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and other pop music icons of the ’90s and 2000s.

2. Rewriting a classic

We all know the story of the two doomed young lovers in “Romeo & Juliet.” Well, David West Read, an Emmy award-winning writer and executive producer for the popular comedy series “Schitt’s Creek,” decided to flip the script and see what might happen if one of those lovers (Juliet) actually survived the climax of arguably the most famous romance of all time? It’s an incredibly clever setup, delivered at the start of the musical, which propels all of the action and adventure to come.

3. Will and Ann

It’s Ann Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife (played by NorCal native Teal Wicks), who really has the problem with the way “Romeo and Juliet” originally ends. So, she proposes — and, really, commandeers — the rewrite in favor of Juliet finding her way in a post-Romeo world. The constant bickering between Will and Ann, over the direction of the play, is some of the freshest and funniest to be found in the musical.

4. Shakespeare’s ego

Many of the night’s best moments come courtesy of the Bard’s gigantic ego, as he embraces the redundancy of quoting himself to prove his own points, underscores many of the now-popular sayings that he first coined and, in general, has a really hard time believing that anyone could have better ideas than his own.

5. Webb and company

The whole cast is terrific (and incredibly talented in the vocal realm), but the star of the show (fittingly) is original Broadway cast member Rachel Simone Webb in the role of Juliet. Webb grew up singing in church and she still brings a sense of that glorious gospel to the Max Martin pop hits she covers on the stage. Her background includes touring as a guest vocalist with Kristin Chenoweth.