The ‘gender identity’ stuff seems to be in your face everywhere these days because everybody wants you to know if they are trans, or if they have hired a trans person, or what have you. I actually just experienced this with my family recently.
My daughter got invited to go to a Broadway show with a bunch of her friends. She’s 12 and the name of the show is & Juliet. I had never heard of it, so I looked it up because I’m not a dope and I wanted to know what she was going to see.
Here’s the description I found on the show’s website:
Created by the Emmy-winning writer from Schitt’s Creek, this hilarious new musical flips the script on the greatest love story ever told. & Juliet asks: what would happen next if Juliet didn’t end it all over Romeo? Get whisked away on a fabulous journey as she ditches her famous ending for a fresh beginning and a second chance at life and love—her way.
Juliet’s new story bursts to life through a playlist of pop anthems as iconic as her name, including “Since U Been Gone‚” “Roar,” “Baby One More Time,” “Larger Than Life‚” “That’s The Way It Is,“ and “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”—all from the genius songwriter/producer behind more #1 hits than any other artist this century. Break free of the balcony scene and get into this romantic comedy that proves there’s life after Romeo. The only thing tragic would be missing it.
That sounds cute, right? It sounds like a little girl power, which is good.
So, my daughter came home from her day in New York City and she had a great time with her friends. I asked what she thought of the show, and she was like, ‘Well, it was a little weird.’ I inquired as to what was “weird” about it, and she said, ‘There was a lot of trans stuff in it, like trans love and trans kissing.’
Needless to say, I was a little confused. It’s been a while since I’ve read Romeo and Juliet, but I don’t think that stuff is in there. Even if Romeo were to die, I don’t think Juliet would go trans. I thought maybe she was sort of exaggerating.
But knowing Broadway, I decided to do a bit more Googling and that’s when I came across a promo video that I missed the first time. Clearly, my research should have gone beyond the show page before my daughter went to see it because the clip features actor Justin David Sullivan, who goes by the pronouns he/she/they and plays Juliet’s non-binary best friend May.
You can see it for yourself below:
The show “celebrates queer love”? That’s good to know because that is not at all what I thought something based on Shakespeare and about Juliet’s ‘next chapter’ would be about.
How about the nondisclosure of any of this in the writeup about the show? Don’t we parents get a right to make a call? You could be sending a much younger child than 12 there. My kid and I have talked about these issues many times but many families haven’t. This could be their first exposure to it. It’s not up to Broadway to do that.
You would think I would have learned my lesson after Doug and I went to see Macbeth starring Daniel Craig last year. It turned out there was no set and hardly any costumes. This is, I guess, the new, cool way to do it.
The story is supposed to be set in eleventh century Scotland, but it ended up being a majority minority cast. The person playing the king’s son was a girl with a blue mohawk-type hairstyle. The play opened with a guy coming out in a wheelchair. I mean, it was every single category you can think of.
And yet we didn’t learn our lesson. We keep going back and getting more of the same. Broadway has always been leftist, but I don’t want it so in my face. I am looking to see something related to Shakespeare – how did we get into queer love, guys making out on stage, and a man dressed as a woman singing “I’m not a girl” while going by he/she/they?
It’s a lot, and it’s especially a lot for a bunch of 12 year olds.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 715 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.