What if the plot shifted and Juliet didn’t kill herself after discovering Romeo useless in William Shakespeare’s tragic romantic basic, “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”?
It will be a wholly completely different play, wouldn’t it? Totally different, but it joins all the opposite twists, interpretations and variations of the Bard’s performs which have saved tens of hundreds of actors, administrators, stage designers and dramaturgs busy over the centuries since Shakespeare’s dying in 1616.
Teal Wicks, who performs William Shakespeare’s spouse within the rollicking Broadway musical “& Juliet”, on tour on the Academy of Music, has her personal concept to clarify this theatrical phenomenon.
On this coming-of-age musical created by the Emmy Award-winning author from “Schitt’s Creek” and filled with chart-topping previous glories, Shakespeare’s spouse, Anne Hathaway, pushes her husband to pen a distinct model – one through which Juliet decides to pursue a second probability for happiness as a substitute of killing herself after Romeo’s dying.
Totally different, proper? However not shocking.
Wicks believes that Shakespeare’s well-known plot traces, sturdy characters and themes have turn into the idea for many of our fashionable tales and performs.
“They’re very wealthy tales with a number of twists,” she mentioned. ““Due to the truth that persons are so accustomed to these tales, even for those who don’t know the precise characters, you recognize the story arcs, it appears like a stable basis so as to add your personal twists and turns. And that’s very enjoyable and thrilling.”
To exhibit how life and Shakespeare have come full circle for Wicks, “& Juliet” will not be her first manufacturing with a twist on a Shakespeare basic. In faculty, she had an element in a musical model of “Romeo & Juliet” that included Motown songs and Aretha Franklin hits.
“It was very enjoyable,” she mentioned.
Nevertheless, Wicks’ present present, “& Juliet,” working March 25 by April 6, is greater than a twist. It boasts a wholly new plot written by David West Learn, a Canadian playwright and the chief producer of “Schitt’s Creek.” It even consists of new characters, like Wicks’ Hathaway and the Bard himself.
Shakespeare has been in all places this season.
In Mt. Ethereal, the Quintessence Theatre Group staged the controversial and full of life “Kiss Me Kate,” a 1948 play inside a play full with gangsters and primarily based on “The Taming of the Shrew.” Now enjoying there are two very completely different Shakespeare romances, “A Midsummer Night time’s Dream” and “Antony & Cleopatra,” in nightly rotation by April 27.
In Heart Metropolis, the Lantern Theater Co. is extending Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “A lot Ado About Nothing,” by March 23.
“They’re such epic tales that he created that they’ve turn into a framework that we inform by our artwork,” Wicks mentioned.
If Shakespeare’s performs include a built-in framework for artistic deviation, Wicks’ character, Anne Hathaway, comes with the precise reverse.
“I knew nothing about Anne Hathaway,” Wicks mentioned.
That’s as a result of there’s not a lot to know.
“There are little or no precise details about her life and only some situations the place she is in any public report. Now we have a line in our present, how William left his spouse their second-best mattress,” Wicks mentioned. “That’s true. [His will] is likely one of the few paperwork that truly talks about their marriage.
“There’s a lot historic fiction about her. Lots of people have a number of conjectures and concepts about what their relationship was. I don’t know what the reality is.”
It’s inevitable, Wicks mentioned, that folks will turn into within the partner of a monumental determine like William Shakespeare. However absent concrete biographical data on Anne Hathaway, “she will turn into a vessel for placing in your ideas about heterosexual marriage and girls’s points. You may pour it into there and have as many theories as you need.
“What I really like about Anne in ‘& Juliet’ is that she is such a fleshed-out function, [yet it] nonetheless has sufficient room in your interpretation and your freedom,” Wicks mentioned.
What Wicks additionally loves about Anne is that it’s not the main function. Wicks has been there, performed that as Elphaba, the depraved witch, in “Depraved” on Broadway and in numerous touring firms.
Because the lead, “you’re holding the story going and you’re holding the play shifting ahead. You’re the one ensuring the practice stays on the tracks,” she mentioned. It’s bodily and mentally exhausting eight reveals every week, music after music.
“Anne is integral to the story,” but she’s not on stage each minute, Wicks mentioned. “I get breaks. I get one massive solo and I’m blissful for it.”
The viewers will in all probability be blissful too with the play listing — pun meant — which incorporates Swedish songwriter-producer Max Martin hits like “Since U Been Gone”, “Can’t Cease the Feeling!” and “Child One Extra Time”.
So, what ought to the viewers take from “& Juliet”?
“The lesson of this story that we get to have fun is having a second probability at life,” Wicks mentioned. “It’s about following your coronary heart and discovering who you’re by yourself phrases.”
FYI
“& Juliet”, introduced by Ensemble Arts Philly and The Shubert Group, March 25 by April 6, Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, 215-893-1999.
“A lot Ado About Nothing”, Lantern Theater Co., by March 23, St. Stephen’s Theater, 923 Ludlow St., Phila., 215-829-0395.
“A Midsummer Night time’s Dream” and “Antony & Cleopatra”, in nightly rotation, Quintessence Theatre Group, March 7-April 27, Sedgwick Theater, 7137 Germantown Ave., Phila. 215-987-4450.