Theater Review: & JULIET (North American Tour / Chicago)
7 / 10
What matters is the built-in audience for those songs. This is less of a musical than a best-of collection—or a commemorative concert—for the fans. One could argue that that could be said of most jukebox musicals, but that is not true. Most jukebox musicals—at least the ones that I’ve seen—try to naturally integrate the songs into the narrative. Some do it rather well, Hell’s Kitchen being a sterling recent example. & Juliet doesn’t even try. It’s the other way around here. It’s as if a list of songs was assembled first, and the narrative and characters were tortuously twisted to fit them.
