Sam Gold has directed five Shakespeare tragedies, but his latest, “Romeo + Juliet,” is something different—a loud, clubby production designed to attract audiences the age of its protagonists. “It’s as if the teens from ‘Euphoria’ decided that they had to do Shakespeare,” Vinson Cunningham said, “and this is what they came up with.” The production stars Rachel Zegler, who starred in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” and Kit Connor, of the Gen Z Netflix hit “Heartstopper,” and features music by Jack Antonoff. Gold, who cut his teeth doing experimental theatre with the venerable downtown company the Wooster Group, bristles at the view that his production is unfaithful to the original. “A lot of people falsely sort of label me as a deconstructionist or something, because they’re wearing street clothes,” he tells Cunningham. “I’m not deconstructing these plays. I’m doing the play. . . . I think it’s a gross misunderstanding of the difference between conventions and authentic engagement in a text.” Gold aspires to excite kids to get off their phones. “We are in a mental-health crisis [of] teen suicide. I’m doing a play about teen suicide, and all those young people are coming. And I think we can help them.”
Chapter 1: What makes Sam Gold's production of Romeo and Juliet unique?
One sort of subtext of the play was Kit Conner's triceps are very prominently displayed all play along. But, you know, it just seemed to have this, like, very populist feeling where the people in the audience are being interacted with are— Offering their emotions, their sighs, their sort of exclamations. What was your theory of audience in making this show?
I was like, what if we make a show where that generation of audience member feels spoken to, feels like this is for me, feels like I can come to this, I feel oriented. And then what you give them is Shakespeare, right? They want to be there and they want to take in this ritual that really reflects something deep about our society. And they do. Sort of 18 to 25 is sort of our audience.
And they are laughing at 400-year-old jokes. They are hearing – the wit, the poetry, the rhymes, the scansion, the sonnets, and they are responding to the language. They're not laughing at Kit's triceps. They're laughing at Shakespeare. You know, they're really hearing the play. So that was the goal. It was never... I did not mean to denigrate kids. It's not to be cynical.
I wanted the world on stage to reflect the world that that generation of audience member experiences in life, which is what Shakespeare did. Shakespeare was a populist, and Shakespeare was putting plays on to communicate very directly with his popular audience. The jokes were of the moment. There's a song referenced in Romeo and Juliet,
The nurse's servant, Peter, after everybody thinks Juliet's dead, says to the musicians, because there are always live musicians in a Shakespeare play, and they sort of break the fourth wall. And Peter says to the musician that is underscoring the Shakespeare play, will you play Heart's Ease? Because my heart is full, and we need a silly dump to comfort us.
Mm-hmm.
So I use a pop song from this generation's vocabulary because that's what Shakespeare was doing. He was taking a song everybody knew and making a joke using it to lighten the mood on stage. And that's what I'm doing. It's not cynical. It's genuinely trying to do for a young audience now what I firmly believe is what Shakespeare was trying to do with his audience.
How sweet... You, Sam, you've directed now all five of Shakespeare's tragedies.
Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet, and now Romeo and Juliet. And I... has this been a project for you? Because you've also done, you've worked on Ibsen, you've worked on other things. But has this Shakespeare sort of visitation for you? Do you conceive of it as one project?
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Chapter 2: Why did Sam Gold choose to direct Romeo and Juliet now?
Yeah, no, I was thinking about this as I watched, again, in an amazing way, those young people who were at Romeo and Juliet at the end, just, like, swarming the exits, waiting to receive Rachel and Kit. And I wondered, what came into my mind is, you know, whether there is any difference, whether there needs to be any difference, um...
between sort of the function of the audience as we classically understand it in theater and the new word that we have, which is like fandom. And whether that at all is something that sort of is in the fringes of your consciousness as you make your work. I mean, I don't think it's new at all. True.
Yes, we have made this term and sort of... You know, when Richard Burton was playing Hamlet and Elizabeth Taylor would sit in the balcony to watch... everyone would line up around the fucking block to try to see Liz Taylor, right? They weren't coming for Richard Burton's Hamlet. They were coming to see Elizabeth Taylor. And that's always been the case.
And I think it was the case in Shakespeare's time. And there's nothing I'm enjoying more right now than the fact that there's 19-year-old audience members hearing and understanding the poetry of Shakespeare and then being so excited at the end that they want to stand for an hour to meet the person that delivered that language. And I do think that's part of it.
Part of it is that they love Heartstopper. Part of it is that they're addicted to their phones. But part of it is that the play lit them up. But I don't think it's a bad thing for the theater that these young people are – I mean, our stage door is crazy. I saw it, dude. And I don't think that's a bad thing. No, it seemed like a sign of health.
Yeah, like if those people come see another play, people need theater. Yes. We know we need to get in a room and tell stories. It is not good. No one thinks, like the Surgeon General is telling you, it is not good to be at home looking at social media all the time. We are in a mental health crisis. Teen suicide. I'm doing a play about teen suicide, right? I'm doing a play about teen suicide.
And all those young people are coming. And I think we can help them. That can be good.
Well, Sam, thank you so much for these interpretations, this work, and for talking to us. This is great. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's the director, Sam Gold, talking about the latest revival of Romeo and Juliet, which is now playing on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater. And that's The New Yorker Radio Hour for today. I'm Vincent Cunningham, a staff writer at The New Yorker.
And, by the way, I'm also one of the co-hosts of The New Yorker's weekly culture podcast, Critics at Large. New episodes drop every Thursday. David Remnick will be back on Friday. Thanks for listening.
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