What if Juliet didn’t die? What if she lived, and went on to have a life of her own? They’re the questions posed in & Juliet, a joyous theatrical remix of Shakespeare’s best-known love story of star-crossed lovers, reports HELEN MUSA. 

If there’s one thing almost everyone knows about the story of Romeo and Juliet it is that they both die.

Or do they?

That’s the question Anne Hathaway poses to her husband William Shakespeare in the musical & Juliet, when the playwright’s wife interrupts his famous tragedy with a domestic challenge: what if Juliet didn’t die? What if she lived, and went on to have a life of her own?

The result is a joyous theatrical remix of Shakespeare’s best-known love story of star-crossed lovers, with a witty script by writer David West Read (Schitt’s Creek).

Set somewhere between Elizabethan England and the 21st century, & Juliet is a jukebox musical packed with pop hits by artists such as Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Bon Jovi. Instead of ending in tragedy, the show imagines a new story for Juliet, one built on independence, friendship and self-discovery.

When I catch up with the show’s young stars, Chloe Stevenson as Juliet and McKinley Brown as Romeo, over coffee in Manuka, they’re determined to convert me to the idea. By the end of our conversation, they’ve pretty well succeeded.

Both arrive with infectious enthusiasm and impressive credentials.

Brown, a Canberra local and product of Burgmann Anglican School in Gungahlin, graduated from the powerhouse of musical theatre training, the Queensland Conservatorium. After finishing his studies he decided Canberra’s creative scene was where he wanted to be and returned home, completing postgraduate study at the University of Canberra. These days the 25-year-old balances rehearsal with teaching at Fraser Primary School.

“I reckon most of the musical theatre people I know are teachers as well,” Stevenson cuts in.

She’s at the very start of her career. An 18-year-old recent graduate of St Clare’s College, she grew up on a farm outside Bungendore and admits she had never seen & Juliet before being cast.

One of the show’s co-directors, Charlotte Morphett, had actually been her performing arts teacher at school.

Like Brown, she has already secured a place at the Queensland Conservatorium, though she has deferred for a year while pursuing opportunities closer to home. She’s currently working on a music project in Sydney as a singer-songwriter.

Brown is quick to praise her performance.

She’s got a powerhouse voice, she brings the house down, he says, clearly still a little astonished by it.

The casting also echoes the original Shakespearean pairing more closely than audiences might expect. Juliet in Shakespeare’s play was only 14, while Romeo was a few years older. Updated for modern sensibilities, an 18-year-old Juliet and a mid-twenties Romeo seem almost perfectly matched, especially, the pair joke, given the general belief that boys mature more slowly than girls.

The plot of & Juliet springs from that imagined domestic argument between Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. In the show, the playwright’s actors mostly side with Anne, prompting Shakespeare to rewrite his own play as the action unfolds.

The show takes Romeo and Juliet and flips it on its head, Brown says.

Some of the Elizabethan characters speak in iambic pentameter, but the modern ones definitely don’t. Instead, they burst into a string of pop anthems including… Baby One More Time, I Kissed a Girl and It’s My Life.

The musical is built around the songs of Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, whose catalogue forms the backbone of the score.

The creators, Brown says, are trying to appeal both to Shakespeare lovers and to younger audiences – turning a story about doomed love into a celebration of life.

In this version, Juliet refuses to be defined by tragedy. She runs away to Paris with her friends April and May (yes, the months) and her faithful nurse. There she encounters François, known as Frankie, the owner of a nightclub where romance sparks during a wild night out. But complications soon emerge when secrets about Frankie are revealed.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare and Anne continue to argue over how the story should unfold.

Since Shakespeare still holds the quill, he manages a theatrical surprise: he brings Romeo back to life just before the end of Act One, just as Juliet is beginning to think she might manage perfectly well without a man. It makes for a spectacular act-one curtain.

And, here’s a spoiler, she might be still in love with Romeo. You’ll have to see the show.

Behind the scenes, the production boasts a formidable creative team, with co-directors and co-choreographers Charlotte Morphett and James Tolhurst-Close leading the staging, and Callum Tolhurst-Close as musical director. The show’s complex dance sequences even require two dance captains, Melissa Markos and Charlotte Jackson.

& Juliet, Free-Rain Theatre Company, The Q, Queanbeyan, March 31-April 26.