William Shakespeare’s timeless love story about a 13-year-old girl and her hunky teen boyfriend—whose entire courtship was shorter than a bout of mild food poisoning—gets yet another revision as the play transforms to become a pop musical in Verona’s Romeo & Juliet.
Directed by Timothy Scott Bogart, the classic tale of two households both alike in dignity but torn asunder by an ancient grudge features a cast that includes Jason Isaacs and Rupert Everett as heads of the warring Montagues and Capulets, Rebel Wilson as as Lady Capulet, and Dan Fogler as the Apothecary. At the center of the Shakespearean drama as the two lovesick teens are Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward, who head this remake that trades in iambic pentameters for pop ballads as the play meshes its Italian Renaissance setting with modern music.
“We’ve set out to tell the greatest love story of all time, set to the musical pulse of our time. But Shakespeare only told part of that remarkable tale, whose events changed the course of history,” commented helmer Scott Bogart to Deadline.
