Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The breezy new musical ROMEO & BERNADETTE is an amusingly incongruous love letter to Shakespeare and Brooklyn

• By drediman
• May 17, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, Mark Saltzman’s Romeo & Bernadette: A Musical Tale of Verona & Brooklyn opened Off-Broadway at Theater 555. The current run marks the return to New York of the joyful musical, which enjoyed a pre-pandemic run at A.R.T/New York Theatres courtesy of Amas Musical Theatre in January 2020, shortly before the entirety of the performing arts was shut down. The show is a sort of a musical comedy sequel to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which finds Romeo – after having been lulled by a sleep-inducing potion (in this version, instead of poison) to slumber for centuries – pursuing a Juliet doppelgänger through the streets of 1960s Verona and gang-ridden Brooklyn (!).

In short, Romeo & Bernadette is an amusingly incongruous love letter to both Shakespeare and Brooklyn, filled with witty, satiric references to both the Bard’s famous tragedy, as well as the Italian mob lifestyle. Certainly, there are shades of Guys and Dolls and West Side Story, but the musical that comes closest to its breezy tone and silly, escapist fun is the jukebox musical Mamma Mia! In fact, Romeo & Bernadette is in its own way a jukebox musical. You see, its sprightly score has been culled from a slew of classic Italian melodies (e.g., music by Enrico Cannio, Rodolfo Falvo, Francesco Paulo Tosti, Tomasso Giordani, Roggiero Leoncavallo, G.B. De Curtis, Mario Costa, Giacchino Rossini, and Vincenzo Bellini are well represented), which have been repurposed for the devised plot and overlaid with Mr. Saltzman’s spirited lyrics.

All-in-all, the production – which is allegedly eying a Broadway transfer – provides solid entertainment, particularly for those looking to simply sit back and enjoy a relatively mindless time at the theater (tourists and weary businessmen would seem to be the show’s target audience). The musical has been directed efficiently and often times exuberantly by Justin Ross Cohen (Mr. Cohen also provides the proficient choreography). The returning cast is largely a hoot, giving parodic, broad comic performances that make the material pop. Coming off most endearingly are Nikita Burshteyn’s excessively ardent Romeo and Judy McLane’s wanna-be regal Camille Penza (i.e., Lady Capulet). But perhaps best of all though is Troy Valjean Rucker, who plays all of the show’s miscellaneous characters with scene-stealing hilarity.

RECOMMENDED

ROMEO & BERNADETTE: A MUSICAL TALE OF VERONA & BROOKLYN
Off-Broadway, Musical
Theater 555
2 hours (with one intermission)
Through June 26