What happens when you mash up William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” with a feminist/non-binary subplot and more than two dozen of Swedish hitmaker Max Martin’s most famous pop songs?

You get “& Juliet,” the wildly clever 2022 Broadway musical now playing through Sunday at the San Diego Civic Theatre. While the national touring production may not be quite as high-tech as the Broadway staging I saw in 2023, it’s just as funny, well-cast and entertaining.

Written by David West Read, “& Juliet” imagines what would have happened if Shakespeare’s Juliet decided not to kill herself after waking up in the Capulet crypt to find her new husband, Romeo, dead at her side.

That’s the pitch Shakespeare’s wife, Anne, makes to her husband as he’s putting the finishing touches on his 1595-era romantic tragedy. Women of Anne’s time had no power over their own lives, so she asks her husband to grant his fictional Juliet a happier ending.

From there, this tongue-in-cheek romp takes off on an adventure to Paris, where Anne joins the sprung-to-life Juliet and her best friend, May, a non-binary person. (As Anne points out to the audience when May arrives, the real Shakespeare wrote several plays that used gender expression as a plot point.)

Like all jukebox musicals, this show’s book was written to fit the lyrics of songs from the writer’s catalog. Some jukebox musical scriptwriters do such a bad job stretching the plot to incorporate unrelated songs that it’s cringe-worthy. But not Read. His selection of mostly love and breakup songs from Martin’s catalog (the show uses songs from the ’90s and early 2000s) fit the plot perfectly, and often hilariously.

For example, Juliet sings the Jessie J hit “Domino” to mark her independence, and then Britney Spears’ “Oops! I Did it Again” when she hastily falls in love a second time. Adam Lambert’s solo “Whataya Want From Me” is turned into a breakup duet. And Spears hit “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” becomes May’s soul-searching ballad. Songs performed by the Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Romeo, The Weeknd and even Celine Dion also fit seamlessly into the story.

As a backdrop for all this contemporary music, the show’s choreography, lighting and glitzy projections combine to create the look and feel of a flashy ’90s-era boy band concert.

The show’s talented lead is Fabiola Caraballo Quijada as Juliet. She joined the tour last month just three months after graduating from her Texas high school and winning the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (known as “The Jimmys”). She’s got sass, personality and a big singing voice, and because of her age and petite stature she suits the role of 13-year-old Juliet.

Also strong are Kathryn Allison as Juliet’s maid Angélique, the affable CJ Eldred as Shakespeare and endearingly funny Crystal Kellogg as Anne.

At the performance I attended, there were many older season subscribers who were not familiar with Martin’s music before the show. But the songs are so catchy, upbeat and toe-tapping, they were just as enthused as the Millennials and Gen Z members of the crowd.

‘& Juliet’

When: 8 p.m. Oct. 17; 2 and 8 p.m. Oct. 18; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Oct. 19

Where: San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown

Tickets: $57.25-$87

Online: broadwaysd.com/upcoming-events/and-juliet

Originally Published: October 16, 2025 at 4:29 PM PDT