Summary 
On a small black-box stage with little scenery and casual costuming, this world premiere musical comedy features clever lyrics, catchy songs, inspired piano playing and fine singing. A parody of the famous tragedy, the show surprises with its flashback-based but clearly told story and slew of amusing references to other plays in the canon. Topical references abound, as do sex and masturbation jokes as well as vulgar language, but the production proves to be witty and very funny original entertainment.
Design
Book by Ron West. Music and Lyrics by Ron West and Phil Swann.
Directed by Ron West. Musical direction by Phil Swann. Set and lights by Heather Graff and Richard Peterson. Costumes by Alison Siple.
Cast
Rick Hall (Prince Escalus/Paris), Bruce Green (Friar Laurence), Nicole Parker (Sampson/Juliet), Brian Gallivan (Gregory/Tybalt), David Castellani (Abraham/Lord Montague/Mercutio/Apothecary), Roberta Duchak (Balthazar/Lady Capulet), Lauren Bishop (Benvolio/Friar John), Ron West (Lord Capulet), Keegan-Michael Key (Romeo).
Analysis
A world premiere co-production between Second City and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, performed in the latter's black-box upstairs space, the Romeo and Juliet Musical features the best of both companies, a clever and audacious new script and a state-of-the-art facility. The cast, led by writer-director Ron West - who also plays a lecherous, maiden-groping Lord Capulet - is prominently comprised of Second City alumni, with the star performers also regulars on the satirical skit television show "Mad TV." West's score, co-written with Phil Swann, is a lively piano-based series of catchy melodies laced with rapid-fire rhymes, contemporary references, and the occasional comical vulgarity.
West presents the Romeo and Juliet romantic tragedy as told in flashback by the arrested Friar to the presiding Prince Escalus ("you're in trouble, just admit it") with the angry citizens of Verona potentially an avenging mob ("it's Friar Laurence's fault!"). The brief vignettes allow for set and costume changes as well as observation on the romance's social context - "Verona's a patient and you're a limb I must amputate" - and self-reflective humor. Friar Laurence scratches his head at the mention of an "electric" chair in the 1590s, wonders at his ironically political fate at the hands of the Prince ("you're my weapon of mass distraction"), and finally implores the heavens in a prayer: "this is Larry, God."
Bruce Green's bewildered Friar is the center of the production, but it is the bouncy piano chords and clever lyrics - sometimes crudely topical - that drive the show, and West sets the scene perfectly from the opening, with the entire cast singing the energetic "It's a Beautiful Day in Verona." Gregory and Sampson begin, explaining the Capulet point of view, followed by Abraham and Balthazar for the Montague perspective, the conflict between them gang-like but still inherently silly: "as drunken stupid louts we have finally found our niche/to insult each other's manhood, we call each other bitch." The comically über-violent Tybalt - "we're young and dumb, we think we're hung, we're virile and we're tough" - threatens to start a street fight, and Benvolio intervenes ("refrain from violence or you'll answer to my sword") but is greeted with rhyming yawns: "that'd be fine with me/I'm, like, fifteen and really bored." Romeo literally stops the show with his moon-eyed waxing poetic for a young lady ("I pine for Rosaline like a corpse craves a tomb") that causes the rest of the cast to erupt with eye rolls and exasperated gestures ("Oh, come on!"), and they cross their arms and mutter, vexed by Romeo's callow teenaged sentimentalism.
Keegan-Michael Key, veteran of Chicago's Second City stage revues as well as television's "Mad TV," plays a likeable Romeo as an oft-confused teenager wading his way through a difficult scenario: "I bought the Cliffs Notes/I do what I can." More a savvy comedian with a flair for timing and punch-lines than a musical comedy singer, Key still manages to carry his vocal weight ("I'm Jonesing for Juliet!") as well as some wickedly droll responses: when Balthazar tells him "you're a pain in the ass," Key's Romeo sings, "hey, I call it depressed", and the Friar's advice to "get out of your funk" is met with a tunefully wry "that's good advice from a Franciscan monk." Key's expressions are priceless, as in his bemused reaction to more of Friar Laurence's advice - "have fun while you're young/go and hit some today" - and his topical asides may seem clumsy but are sung with stylish wit on stage by Key: "my banishment is cruel/like listening to a hockey fan explain the icing rule" or "I'll work on my metaphors/for Mantua's a bloody bore." Nicole Parker, another "Mad TV" alumnus, co-stars as a rather worldly Juliet, and her comic chops match that of Key, but her vocal talents literally make the production sing. Strong of voice with an excellent range, she manages the show-stopping Broadway-style love song - with its antithetical condemnation of Paris: "oh how I hate him/I detest the way he smells" - as well as the breathy, long-sentence songs conjured by West and Swann: "I don't know where you're ensconced, but I live in the Renaissance/I'm enlightened and I'm making my own choice," or "you cannot arrange my faux engagement without sparking fire of my enragement." Parker's fiery Juliet, a firecracker with a whip-crack wit, proves herself independent and proud and fiercely protective of her life and her feelings - "I'd rather wind up dead/than grant him my maidenhead" - in a fittingly apt contrast to the boyish and lovesick - and somewhat daft - Romeo.
Supporting performances are vividly realized, especially a narcissistic Mercutio and a beyond-the-borderline sadistic Tybalt. David Castellani plays a slew of supporting roles and ensemble parts, and he excels in his portrayal of a comically vain Mercutio: "I'm witty, I'm pretty, I'm prince of the city/and it's just a pity you're not me." Castellani's strutting Mercutio nearly steals the show from Key and Parker with his well-posed comical vanity - "I'm witty, I'm pretty, I'm gay as in giddy" - and bloated ego: "my genius is wondrous, my singing is thunderous/the sunrise was designed for me." Mercutio's Queen Mab scene may be self-indulgently showy - Romeo tells him to "go take a jump in the moat" - but Mercutio's big number is "What a Pity I'm Dead," following the sword duel with Tybalt. Almost literally chewing the scenery, Castellani's gasping Mercutio earns some of the biggest laughs of the night - "heed my advice/don't have your heart sliced" - especially with his characteristic pride: "everyone dies but I always thought an exception for me would be made." When he curses the two families and finally expires to a big and resounding piano chord, the audience spontaneously applauds. Tybalt, the duel with Mercutio just a distraction from his outrageous bloodlust for Romeo - his tender interlude "I want to kill him/please let me kill him" is sung to the same lilting sentimental melody as Romeo's love ballad - seethes and sputters ("I want to slay him, slice dice and flay him") with farcical venom, and earlier, he seems about to explode in explaining his rage to West's Capulet: "It's my duty to our clan/to tear his heart out with my hands."
West's conception of the teenaged romance is decidedly cynical and blatantly unromantic. In a duet interlude - "Why don't we use each other tonight?" - the randy Romeo ("I can't stand your family/so a one-night stand is grand for me") and the pragmatic Juliet ("I'd like to get back at my family if for no other reason than spite") strike a handshake bargain: her "I'll scratch your back" receives a lusty "while you're on yours" response. Key and Parker may lack onstage chemistry with their interactions limited to sharing performance space in hyper-emoted skits and songs, but they present confident stage presences and perform with unbridled enthusiasm. Parker even imbues her Juliet with significant depth, as the character actually begins to fall in love with her lover - "At first it was my clever ploy/to simply use that handsome boy" - and she reveals a sudden warmth ("together we'll sing a melody extraordinary") that the Nurse considerably darkens with her rhyming response: "you're writing your obituary." In another show-stopping moment, Juliet and Romeo serenade each other with "The Ones Who Started it All," lauding their legendary romance and comically denigrating the "watered down" romantic couples that have imitated them through the ages: "Tracy and Hepburn send royalty checks." The duet lists famous lovers, beginning with Launcelot and Guinevere, then including Desi and Lucy, and Tony and Maria, followed by Sonny and Cher, then Rhoda and Sam. The list of lovers reaches the 1990s with Winslet and DiCaprio, then begins to teeter into farce with Demi and Ashton, and finally falls right off the edge with "Paris Hilton and five guys I know personally," perhaps the biggest laugh of the night.
West maintains the elements of the story well enough for a first-time theatre-goer or Romeo and Juliet neophyte to follow the main story and most of the subplots, and his lyrics are peppered with enough references - as well as ribald asides and retorts - to keep the seasoned Shakespearean grinning. Despite a penchant for vulgarity ("who's the bitch now, bitch?" one warring family member inquires) and a series of masturbation jokes - "no more spanking the monkey alone in the sack," plus a variety of outrageous euphemisms - West's script manages to refer to Hamlet, The Tempest, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus, and Caesar. The references come fast and furious from the beginning - "Unlike the killing of King Hamlet which left all of Denmark rotten/the basis of our quarrel has been totally forgotten" - and during the preparation for Juliet's wedding to Paris, it is noted that "here is Cordelia and both her hater sisters" and there is "Katherine the shrew and her beau Petruchio." West's Capulet rebukes Tybalt by telling him, "Your rage is ludicrous/like Titus Andronicus," and when the anti-Friar crowd becomes dangerous, they mutter (in song) to themselves: "Brutus stabbed Caesar or at least that's what they say/but where was Friar Laurence on that Roman holiday?" Romeo is advised to "make a beast with two backs" with other women, and apparently dead in her crypt, Juliet moans, "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" Other Shakespeare references abound, from the explanation about the lack of rights - "there's no due process/and Miranda is the shipwrecked daughter of Prospero" - to another quite funny duet, with Romeo chiding Juliet regarding archaic language in "Why Wherefore Art Thou (instead of just why)?," imploring her to be more direct and plain spoken.
Innately silly but with a hard edge - in the best tradition of Second City's history of revues - the production features West's father of the bride Capulet outlawing any dancing to Kool and the Gang at Juliet's Our Town-style wedding, insulting Paris's prenuptial agreement ("the cheapskate!"), barring the use of expensive and fragile pewter plates, and struggling several times with flower arrangements. Lady Capulet's love song devolves into a diatribe against her lecherous husband ("He's flatulent") and her rhyme scheme matches his "snores" to his "whores." West adroitly balances the silliness with keen insight. During the catchy but somber, "O Woe O Woe," when Juliet is found as an apparent suicide, the singers rhyme the rumblingly low "o woe" refrain with deadpan alternations of "ob la di bla da," "eenie meenie minie mo," "na na hey goodbye," "sha na na na na," and even "ee-eye-ee-eye-oh." By comparison, the Nurse's self-interested lament - "where will I find another job/I'm fifty-four years old" - carries dramatic impact, as does Lady Capulet's concern regarding her social status after the loss of her only child: "I'm a worn-out and overpriced whore." West himself lightens the suddenly somber moment, with his frenetic Lord Capulet fretting - "the wedding is now a wake /it's easy enough to fire the band, but what will I do with the cake?" - but of course insisting to his guests that "the dowry is not refundable" and that "we'll still accept gifts!"
The production, packed tight with lightweight onstage antics and all the clever lyrics, drives toward its conclusion with some of its strongest moments. Romeo's textual visit to a nameless apothecary is here an unsettling hard-drugs street score with Gary the Apothecary - "what's the occasion?" "it's my suicide" "then you'll want cyanide" - lightened somewhat by some modern commercial sensibility: "there's a coupon for the next time/thank you please come again." But the scene in the crypt with Key's Romeo and Parker's Juliet is West's crowning jewel. The two television stars literally duel for the bigger and more dramatic moment, together singing "Thank You for Dying First" and jockeying with hambone emotions for the final star-power moment. As Romeo sings - "now I'll mourn you in monologue/because I'm a great big stage hog" - he quite in-character shows some weak-kneed trepidation: "I'll drink this before someone gets in/I'd rather not see the rigor mortis set in." His "thus with a kiss I die" moment is an exultation in one-upmanship - "though I'm sad my baby's gone/my speech was a whole page long" - and the two trade thank-yous for the other passing away first and giving up the limelight. Parker's Juliet's voice soars - "since I'm an ingénue/the scenery's mine to chew" and "yes, I'm a drama queen/exiting for my big scene" - and their final passing in an exhausted heap ("Jesus that really smarts/but somehow it missed my heart") draws the loudest applause of the evening.
The wild production ends, appropriately, with a deus ex machina intervening appearance by God, conveniently enough in the form of the Prince himself. A milling onstage crowd initially resists his urge for clemency - "Alleluia, Holy Smoke, Great Balls of Fire/God please have mercy but we gotta kill the Friar" - but God perseveres, replying to cries of "where is that written?" with commanding and rhyming citations of both "Golashes, Chapter Three," as well as "Fallopians, Chapter Five." With the crowd finally pacified, God laughs much like Santa Claus, and West's outrageous Romeo and Juliet Musical concludes with a stirring reprise of "It's Beautiful Day in Verona."