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The profile · researched 15 October 2026
The pop-catalogue rewrite of Shakespeare that has outlived its own Broadway run
Seven years after it opened in Manchester, the Max Martin jukebox musical & Juliet is winding down a two-year North American tour while its Broadway company counts down to a January 2027 closing notice.
A tragedy reopened in Manchester
& Juliet was built the way catalogue musicals usually are, around a songbook rather than a story. The book is by David West Read, the Schitt's Creek writer, and the score is drawn from songs written or co-written by the Swedish producer Max Martin across three decades of chart pop. The conceit is a backstage argument: Anne Hathaway challenges her husband William Shakespeare over the ending of Romeo and Juliet, and the pair rewrite it in front of the audience, with Juliet refusing the dagger and leaving Verona for Paris instead.
The production opened at Manchester Opera House on 10 September 2019 and ran there until 12 October before transferring to the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, where it began on 2 November 2019. Luke Sheppard directed, Jennifer Weber choreographed, Soutra Gilmour designed the set, Paloma Young the costumes and Howard Hudson the lighting — the same creative package that has since travelled to every subsequent company.
At the 2020 Olivier Awards the West End production took nine nominations and won three: Miriam-Teak Lee for Best Actress in a Musical, David Bedella for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical and Cassidy Janson for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical. The London run closed on 25 March 2023 after more than three years. Separate sit-down productions played Toronto from 22 June to 14 August 2022 and Melbourne from 26 February to 29 July 2023.
Broadway, and a closing date
The Broadway company began previews at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on 28 October 2022 and opened on 17 November 2022. It collected nine Tony Award nominations in 2023 — among them Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Actress in a Musical, Best Featured Actress in a Musical, choreography, orchestrations and all three design categories — and won none of them. It ran anyway, for four years.
In September 2026 the producers announced the end of it. The final Broadway performance is set for 3 January 2027, at which point the production will have played 1,723 regular performances and 20 previews, placing it inside the fifty longest-running musicals in Broadway history. The announcement put the engagement's gross above 175 million dollars and its attendance above 1.5 million.
The closing company is led by Gianna Harris as Juliet and includes Chrissy Metz, Alison Luff and Paulo Szot, who was in the original Broadway cast. Further additions were announced for the final weeks, including Kenzie Ziegler and Aly Michalka, the latter making a Broadway debut. The touring production, meanwhile, was confirmed to be continuing through November 2026 — which means the road company outlasts the Broadway one by only a matter of weeks.
Two years on the road
The North American tour opened on 22 September 2024 at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore. A separate UK and Ireland tour had launched a few weeks earlier, on 8 July 2024, back at Manchester Opera House where the show started, and ran into mid-2025.
For its second year on the road the tour recast its lead. Fabiola Caraballo Quijada was announced in August 2025 as Juliet, having won the 2025 Jimmy Award for Best Performance by an Actress at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards — her third year at the competition after a 2023 nomination and a 2024 finalist place. Born in Venezuela and raised in Tyler, Texas, she was a recent high-school graduate when she joined, is 19 now, and told an Oregon paper in October 2026 that roughly a year and a half of touring had taught her to think no further ahead than the day in front of her.
The 2026 routing has been a conventional one-week-per-city booking with occasional longer stands: Orlando in the first week of January, where Joey Fatone appeared as the comic bodyguard Lance for the engagement through 11 January, then Fort Lauderdale and Naples, Grand Rapids from 10 to 15 March, Ottawa's National Arts Centre at the end of that month, a Chicago stand at the Auditorium Theatre in July, Calgary's Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium from 15 to 20 September, Eugene's Hult Center from 6 to 11 October and Spokane's First Interstate Center from 13 to 18 October. The remaining dates on sale are Boise from 20 to 25 October, Palm Desert from 27 October to 1 November, Albuquerque from 3 to 8 November and Sioux Falls from 11 to 15 November.
A split verdict
Reviews of the touring production have divided along a predictable fault line: how much tolerance a critic has for a plot assembled around a pre-existing playlist. The sharpest dissent came from Chicago in July 2026, where a reviewer argued the show never tries to integrate its songs at all — that the numbers were chosen first and the characters bent to fit them — and singled out the shoehorning of Everybody (Backstreet's Back) and a second act that sags after the Celine Dion duet. Even that notice called the company almost uniformly splendid and named the nurse Angélique's monologue the best piece of writing in the evening.
Canadian notices were warmer. The Calgary review in September 2026 described it as one of the writer's favourite theatre experiences, praising the balance between the comedy and the quieter material and the range Caraballo Quijada brings to Juliet. The Ottawa notice in March 2026 took the same view of the choreography and the lead performance, while flagging sound problems on opening night. Spokane's reviewer, writing on 14 October 2026, reported repeated belly laughs from the house, concentrated in the first act, and a brief lull in the second as the characters reach their reckonings before the energy returns.
Sound has been the recurring technical complaint rather than anything structural. The Orlando opening in January 2026 was delayed by audio trouble and marred by scratchy microphones, which the local reviewer put down to a new company settling into a new building.
What is actually on stage
The physical production is the London one, scaled for road houses. Gilmour's set puts an outsized version of the show's title across the back of the stage, dressed with theatrical clutter and street-art panels; a carousel horse and miniature monuments carry Juliet's journey to Paris. Young's costumes run Renaissance silhouettes through nineties streetwear, and Hudson's lighting switches from a muted, almost monochrome opening into saturated pinks, yellows and violets for the pop numbers — several reviewers have reached for concert comparisons rather than theatrical ones.
The score runs to roughly thirty numbers split evenly across the two acts, opening with Larger Than Life and closing on Can't Stop the Feeling, with I Want It That Way, Baby One More Time, It's My Life, Since U Been Gone, Stronger and Roar carrying the structural weight. Roar functions as the climax; the Backstreet Boys pastiche is the big set piece of the second act. The tour is recommended for ages six and over, though reviewers have noted the script's language is blunter than the branding suggests.
The cast has rotated as the tour has gone on. Crystal Kellogg played Anne Hathaway through the spring and summer of 2026, with Cassie Silva in the role by the Spokane stand in October; CJ Eldred has played Shakespeare, Joseph Torres Romeo, Nico Ochoa May, Noah Marlowe François and Kathryn Allison Angélique across the year's stops.
The show, now
The touring show runs about two and a half hours including an interval, played straight through as a two-act book musical rather than a concert. It opens cold on a near-monochrome stage before the lighting rig takes over for the first big number, and from there alternates comic scenes with full-company pop sequences; the second act contains the Celine Dion duet, a Backstreet Boys pastiche and Roar as the emotional peak, and ends with confetti over the stalls during Can't Stop the Feeling. There is no support act or opening turn. Reviewers through 2026 have described houses singing along, clapping in time and standing to dance by the finale, with the laughs concentrated in the first act and a short dip in the second while the plot resolves its three couples. The recurring complaint from local critics has been microphone and mix trouble on opening nights rather than anything in the staging.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · stageandcinema.com · broadwayworld.com · broadwayworld.com · spokesman.com · broadwaynews.com · andjulietbroadway.com · broadwayworld.com
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