& Juliet

Frank and I are season ticket holders to the Broadway San Jose musical season. I had heard & Juliet was good but, since I thought it was outside the selections in our ticket package, I would need to buy us two seats as a separate purchase, which I did. We went to the Saturday, October 11th matinee performance. 

At the entry, as the usher scanned the tickets on my iPhone for Frank and me, he said "Only two?" Yikes? I had four tickets on my phone. They are not cheap. He pointed me toward the information desk to figure out what had happened. Apparently, Broadway San Jose sends out a reminder email to sell more ticket packages later in the season. As the season continues, there are fewer shows in the package. I possibly read a later email in which & Juliet was missing and bought us two tickets. There are no refunds. Perhaps they could exchange those two tickets for another performance of the show? While staff was looking into that, Frank and I went in to the show. We had our customary seats in row 12, which have a fairly close but not quite straight on view of the stage.

We enjoyed the show a great deal. The actors were energetic; the bickering exchanges between Ann Hathaway and her husband William Shakespeare were humorous. It was fun to see Juliet in the what-if context of today's attitudes where women strive to be independent and seek out their own dreams, rather than feeling obligated to follow the desires of their husband. The staging was colorful and surprisingly not what one would expect in the Shakespearean times or the Globe theatre. The music was upbeat throughout, the harmonies tight and pleasing. According to Wikipedia

& Juliet is a 2019 jukebox musical. ... In the plot, Anne Hathaway negotiates with her husband, William Shakespeare, to change the ending to Romeo and Juliet so that Juliet does not kill herself. (A jukebox musical is a stage musical or musical film in which a majority of the songs are well-known, pre-existing popular music songs, rather than original music composed for the musical.)

The music was parodies or re-sung melodies of the Boy Bands or other artists of that era. The boy band names that came back to me from the era were *NSYNC, Boyz II Men, The Backstreet Boys, and New Kids on the Block, all popular when my kids were in middle school and high school, a little before and after the 1990's. An entertainment article in Good Housekeeping names twenty boy bands and where they are now. The musical spoofed the familiar sounds and dress of that time and brought back pleasant memories to me. I may not have known the specific songs but the gist of the overall tone was undeniable.

So what about those two extra, non-refundable tickets? We were allowed to exchange them for two tickets the next afternoon. Our Sunday, Oct 12th tickets were in the balcony. As soon as we got home we dialed a list of friends offering to give away two tickets. There were no takers. The notice was too short (the next day) and the number of candidates to phone was depressingly few.

 
The next day I decided to take Alex. I did not have parking pre-arranged, and I did not want to chance where I could get a space and how far away it might be for Alex and me to walk. Frank's suggestion, which I took, was to drive to Alex's home and take an Uber to the theatre. Alex seemed a bit befuddled getting into a strange car with me but I played iPhone music for him during the ride and he was content, even happy. The driver dropped us right at the entrance door. It was so easy peasy.

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons... Alex LOVED the show. He took great joy in thumbing through a program. Our seats had a great view from the balcony and the seats had a steep enough angle that we saw clearly over the heads of other theatre goers. Upbeat and peppy, the music also had a lot of harmonizing which almost alway causes Alex to clap.

Alex and I were there early enough to see some of the pre-show on stage antics of setting up. Photos were allowed then but not during the show. Alex stayed intently engaged the entire first act. We took a walk break at intermission and Alex got enough wigglies out, he was a polite theatre goer for the second act, as well. I had to intervene and tone down his clapping and exuberant fist pumping occcasionally, but overall I was so glad I'd brought him.

An Uber came quickly, picking us up right outside the theatre, taking us back to Alex's home. I drove myself back to Livermore. I was tired. After all, the day before had also been an energetic outing for me. Ignoring the cost for the Uber, offset somewhat by no parking fees, my mistake with those two extra tickets turned out to be a happy happenstance.