Shakespeare musicals

Hit musical & Juliet combines Romeo and Juliet with the songs of pop hitmaker Max Martin. Writer and executive producer David West Read (Schitt’s Creek) tells us about how the idea came to him while he was concussed.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is a layering of theatrical devices, a Hollywood riff on both a famous musical and a Shakespearean story for 21st-century audiences.

Sixty years old this week, the 1961 movie West Side Story, based on the acclaimed Broadway musical inspired by Romeo and Juliet, also became a de facto representation of US Latinx in musicals for many years.

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 122 A new production of Kiss Me, Kate is on Broadway now. It features Cole Porter’s memorable music and Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase as Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham, a bickering divorced couple thrown together when…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 80 Without a doubt, American composer Leonard Bernstein’s most significant contribution to the world of Shakespeare was West Side Story, the 1957 smash Broadway hit adaptation of Romeo and Juliet written and created by Jerome Robbins, Arthur…

While Shakespeare musicals borrowed plots, characters, and situations from England’s best-known poet, they remained essentially “American.”

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 68 In 2015, a new musical called Something Rotten! opened on Broadway. The plot: Two brothers living in England in 1595 have had their playwriting careers upended by the arrival of a new guy from Stratford upon…

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 64 Since 2002, Gregory and Jeffery Ameen Qaiyum, better known as GQ and JAQ – the Q Brothers – have been using hip-hop to adapt and update the plays of William Shakespeare. At the time we recorded…