Vanessa Sears somehow makes belting a string of the most recognizable pop songs in history, while dancing and acting, look easy.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
- Title: & Juliet
- Written by: David West Read
- Music and lyrics by: Max Martin and friends
- Director: Luke Sheppard
- Actors: Vanessa Sears, David Silvestri, Julia McLellan, George Krissa, Matt Raffy, Sarah Nairne, David Jeffery and Brandon Antonio
- Company: Mirvish Productions
- Venue: Royal Alexandra Theatre
- City: Toronto, Ont.
- Year: Runs to May 17, 2026
Critic’s Pick
You could say opening night of the hotly-awaited, all-Canadian production of & Juliet was a little, uh, star-crossed.
In the week leading up to media night, actors in the cast posted on Instagram about a punishing flu kicking around Toronto. Then, Mirvish Productions pushed the opening back by a day, citing a large number of illnesses throughout the cast. When Sunday’s rescheduled performance finally rolled around, at least one ensemble member was out of the show, watching from the audience with a pair of crutches at their feet.
And if all that wasn’t enough, Sunday’s show started with a technical difficulty that paused the performance for several minutes.
An inauspicious prologue to the biggest opening in Canadian theatre this year? Perhaps.
But & Juliet – a bona fide phenomenon when the show’s pre-Broadway tryout took over Toronto in 2022 – is a revelation.
A critic’s pick, five stars, a thumbs-up, however you slice it – & Juliet is just that good. (And it’ll only get better once flu season subsides.)
Perhaps that’s unsurprising to the show’s dedicated fandom: David West Read’s punny riff on William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy is just as funny as it was three years ago, and, as always, good luck resisting Swedish pop hitmaker Max Martin’s catalogue of platinum-certified bops.
Vanessa Sears is close to perfect in the title role, fierce and fiery as the young ingenue offered a second chance at life after Romeo.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
But it’s the performances (and, let’s be real, the innumerable confetti cannons) that make & Juliet the experience you’d be doing yourself an enormous disservice to skip. Vanessa Sears is close to perfect in the title role, fierce and fiery as the young ingenue offered a second chance at life after Romeo. Her Juliet is just as nuanced here, surrounded by glitter and with a lexicon of perky Gen Z-isms, as she was at the Stratford Festival in 2024.
Indeed, Sears is a star – and she somehow makes belting a string of the most recognizable pop songs in history, while dancing and acting, look easy.
What makes & Juliet such a blast, however, isn’t just the show’s heroine, but the band of friends, situationships and parental figures who exist in Juliet’s periphery. Sarah Nairne brings bright sass and tender softness to the role of Angelique, Juliet’s nurse – her rendition of Fuckin’ Perfect, near the end of the show, glows with maternal warmth. David Jeffery, meanwhile, is the ultimate bad boy as Romeo: petulant and boorish, yet ultimately sympathetic when the moment calls for it.
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But Read’s script isn’t just a bubblegum-pop-ification of Romeo and Juliet – it’s an irreverent, often silly exploration of what might happen if Shakespeare had written a better ending, with a slightly older Juliet to call the shots on her own life.
As such, Shakespeare and his wife, Anne, are characters in the show, de facto narrators who bridge the gap between the tragedy you might have read in high school and the songs about clubbing and hard drugs that make up much of the musical’s score. (You might enter a brief fugue state when the cast sings Kesha’s Blow while Juliet hangs by her legs from a mid-air chandelier: Just go with it. After my third viewing of & Juliet in as many years, that number still feels like a fever dream.)
George Krissa as Shakespeare, Vanessa Sears as Juliet, Julia McLellan as Anne and Sarah Nairne as Angelique in & Juliet.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Julia McLellan, fabulous as the star of Theatre Aquarius and the Grand Theatre’s co-production of Waitress earlier this year, is just outstanding as Anne. The character’s quirky sense of humour comes easily to McLellan, and her second-act rendition of Celine Dion’s That’s the Way It Is ought to earn her a mid-show standing ovation for the rest of the run.
On the other side of the Shakespeare’s second-best bed – if you know, you know – is heartthrob William. George Krissa is devilishly charming in the role, and as musically divine as ever – the part might as well have been written for him. Even the songs included in the show just to move the plot along – I Want it That Way, for instance, used almost entirely for groan-worthy puns – sound terrific in his care.
Rounding out the principal cast are equally glittering performances from David Silvestri as Lance, Brandon Antonio as François, and Matt Raffy as May. Don’t think too hard about the plot implications of Juliet now having a nonbinary best friend, a queer new romantic interest and a future father-in-law who’s trying to get in bed with her nurse. As with the pyrotechnics, gushes of theatrical haze and, seriously, so many confetti cannons: Just let it happen.
It’s tough not to get a little misty-eyed about an all-Canadian production of a show that celebrates body types of all sizes and love across the spectrums of gender, race and age – never mind with a cast that often outperforms the original Broadway troupe that played Toronto just a few years ago. & Juliet fires on all cylinders, from its flattering, reverb-heavy sound design (by Gareth Owen) to its funky, punky costumes (by Paloma Young). Every song – heck, every second – is a highlight.
A big-budget musical, produced, acted and sung to near-perfection by some of the brightest young talents in Canadian theatre?
Well, to quote William Shakespeare, sort of: I want it that way.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article said Vanessa Sears performed in the Stratford Festival's Romeo and Juliet a few years ago. She performed in the 2024 production.