Kit Connor & Rachel Zegler bring a pulsating Gen Z sensibility to Romeo + Juliet

Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet is all about the vibes.

Achieved in part through impeccable design (costumes by Enver Chakartash, sets by the design collective dots, lights by Isabella Byrd, and sound design by Cody Spencer), Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre feels like a club awash in purple and red light, with teddy bears strewn about. Before the play begins, the cast mills about in various cuddle piles, and you can hear thumping music in the distance — it feels and sounds like you are in a side, chill-out room. The cast is young, hip, cool Gen Z kids wearing baggy jeans and tiny tank tops. Our Romeo (Kit Connor) dons mesh shirts and sequined pants. Juliet (Rachel Zegler) sports mini-skirts and a pair of Dr. Martens with hearts on them. The Apothecary (Taheen Modak) is a shirtless drug dealer, the Friar (Gabby Beans) is a self-help spiritual guide, and the Nurse (Tommy Dorfman) sports a clack fan. 

The production begins with a dance number (choreography by Sonya Tayeh), as Beans introduces each actor by first name, announcing who they will be playing. This meta-theatricality makes the play feel like a Gen Z parable, as if a group of young people are hanging after a night out, acting out a story of two people who disastrously fell in love, complete with a tidy moral about their demise wrought by hate.  

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While Gold’s Shakespeare productions can veer toward gimmicky, the Gen Z focus here is cohesive and leans into the youthful naivety of the protagonists and the ways their feelings and actions are out of step with the world they inhabit. The play’s violence is a byproduct of the younger characters dealing with the repercussions of their parents’ family feud. This production highlights that generational gap, with some slight nods to the modern analog of Gen Z inheriting a world with an impossible slew of problems from previous generations. Even the slogan for this revival tells us: “The youth are f*cked.” 

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As a play, Romeo and Juliet can at times feel overwrought, but Gold finds a compelling yet simple justification: youth. Associated with and perpetually assigned to young people, Romeo and Juliet has an undeniably teenage aura. This production emphasizes the adolescence of the main characters, which helps to render their almost hyperbolically strong feelings more understandable — what teenagers aren’t dramatic, angsty, hormonal, frustrated at their parents, and quick to fall in love? 

The key to this production is melodrama, a term frequently used to describe these exact teenage emotions but also a genre of its own. In its original conception, melodrama referred to plays with music (melos comes from the Greek for music) and featured high stakes, intense emotions, a strong sense of morality, and mostly flat characters, often with singular desires. Music plays a key role in melodrama, reflecting the scene’s emotions and instructing the audience on what is happening in the plot and how they should feel. 

Gold’s Romeo + Juliet embodies melodrama in a multitude of ways. Embracing melodrama unlocks the play, helps explain its extremes, and lets it feel relevant and relatable to a modern, younger audience. The star cross’d lovers’ rapid romance and the quick turn to violence make more sense when placed with the realm of adolescent melodrama — of course they are over the top, they’re teenagers.  

In particular, the melodrama of the production is established most effectively with the music by pop extraordinaire Jack Antonoff. There is background music throughout (performed live by a DJ/musician). As in any good melodrama, the music sets the mood, establishes tone, reflects what is happening on stage emotionally, and guides the audience along. Antonoff has written two songs, a ballad for Juliet and a party song fittingly called “Whiplash,” foreshadowing the emotional and tonal shifts to come. As the play goes from rom-com to tragedy, the music helps us navigate the sometimes jarring terrain smoothly. 

Gold’s production has traces of Charli XCX’s Brat, Olivia Rodrgio’s Sour, and, most appropriately, Lorde’s Melodrama. Like Lorde’s album, which Antonoff produced and co-wrote, this Romeo + Juliet draws on the teenage emotions of longing, love, loss, confusion, and anger, as well as the highs of a house party and the lows of the post-club come-down. 

The center of the party, of course, is our Romeo and Juliet, both played by Gen Z stars. Connor, the famed bisexual heartthrob of Heartstopper fame, provides a hunky, highly watchable, though slightly run-of-the-mill Romeo. Zegler’s Juliet is an absolute tour de force masterpiece. She has the face of a Disney princess, the voice of a goddess, and brings a unique ferocity to Juliet, finding the sass, the wit, and surprisingly, the agency in the character. She proved her mastery of the ingénue type in West Side Story, and here, she gets to dig in even deeper, returning to the source to find new depths. Zegler renders Shakespeare’s prose so natural you almost forget it isn’t modern, colloquial English. 

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The Capulet ball where they first meet is staged as a raucous, glittering rave; they lock eyes across the dance floor and run off together. Their balcony scene is a revelation. Some fun and unexpected staging combined with awe-inspiring performances, especially from Zegler, bring new life to this classic scene’s well-trodden lines. 

For one of the most famous heterosexual love stories of all time, the production mines the original for some of its queer subtext (the leads have even said they believe Romeo is bisexual), yet another choice that lets this production feel more in line with Gen Z values. 

Beyond our central pair, the cast has several stand-outs. The always amazing Beans shines throughout (as Mercutio, the Friar, and the Prince), acting as our emcee and narrator. Gían Pérez is a petulant and spoiled Paris, and Sola Fadiran plays both Capulet parents, towering over Zegler and bouncing between enthusiasm and violence with ease. Dorfman takes on the Nurse and Tybalt in one of the many incomprehensible double-castings of this production (which seem to be entirely logistical, not meant as commentary). Her Nurse, especially in the more comedic moments, is a triumph.   

The remaining ensemble is serviceable, though they blend a bit, which appears to be an intentional choice to keep the focus of the play entirely on the romance and less on the Montague-Capulet war (the tightened script, running two hours and ten minutes, also trims down the more minor roles).  

In a recent New York Times piece, Drew Lichtenberg (artistic producer of Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company) lamented the decline in Shakespeare productions, arguing that our shifting political landscape may be the cause. However, he seems to miss another explanation: Young people are not going to see Shakespeare’s plays, mainly because they are not into his work, feel it is old-fashioned or irrelevant, and sometimes struggle with the language. But this is precisely why this very Gen Z production resonates. It makes Shakespeare accessible, relatable, and enjoyable. The audience was one of the youngest I’ve ever been a part of, and everyone was fully engrossed the entire time. Young stars certainly help, but Gold’s embrace of melodrama, music, and youth culture makes this production work so well.

The youth may be f*cked, but now at least they have Shakespeare to help them along and maybe teach them a thing or two. 

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Romeo + Juliet plays on Broadway at Circle in the Square Theatre, New York City. Performances through February 16, 2025.

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