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We’re living in the Golden Age of Mashups, e.g., Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” (1885) turned into Percival Everett’s “James” (2024). Works by Jane Austen, A. Conan Doyle — anything out of copyright is fair game for predation. But Shakespeare himself has long been everyone’s favorite source of tasty spuds for smashing and changing. If “West Side Story” represents a rare caviar-quality musical adaptation, for example, one can almost assume “& Juliet” will be humdrum “bubblegum”-level fare by comparison — perhaps briefly tasty but utterly lacking in real flavor or nutritional substance.

But in this case, you’d be wrong in that assumption or analogy.

The songs in “& Juliet” are indeed “bubblegum” and pop-quality, but so cleverly and ironically incor

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