Woke 'Non-Binary' Shakespeare Remake Featuring Jewish Juliet and Nazi Romeo Slammed After Key Omission
William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” has been remade so many times in so many different milieus that it’s difficult to get worked up over a new interpretation to it.
“West Side Story” adapted it to quarreling gangs in 1950s Manhattan. Baz Luhrmann’s preposterous 1996 film “Romeo + Juliet” kept the dialogue intact but transposed it into the modern world: Romeo falls in love with Juliet while under the influence of ecstasy, and there’s a car chase scene — both (you may not be surprised to discover) weren’t in the original stage directions.
Even still, a new woke-ified adaptation of the drama by London’s Icarus Theatre Collective turned some heads with its dubious premise, even before a bit of a faux pas.
The new production, according to the U.K. Telegraph, will feature non-binary performers in a “Romeo and Juliet” set in Nazi Germany. Romeo will be a member of the Hitler Youth, whilst Juliet will be Jewish.
“In defiance of their entire society and in secrecy from their closest friends, hopeful young lives burn amidst a cataclysmic backdrop of impending war and the horror of the Holocaust,” a description of the play read.
“Sun and moon shine down on star-crossed lovers as a Jewish girl falls for a member of (Hitler) Youth and the boy questions everything he was taught to believe.”
But, as we know, representation is key in situations like this. To that end, the Icarus Theatre Collective put out an advertisement seeking “non-binary artists, and/or those of global majority, black or Asian heritage” for the cast.
One notable omission for the inclusive, representational casting call about a play set during Hitler’s reign and dealing with the oppression of Jews, reporters discovered? Um, Jews.
“The call did not include any request for Jewish performers to join the cast of the production, set in the Third Reich,” the Telegraph reported on Monday.
The paper noted that “the company has publicly apologized for the omission.”
“Please accept our profound apologies for neglecting to mention performers of Jewish background are preferred for the Capulets,” the theater group said in a statement.
“This was the initial intention; the director is Jewish and our intention has always been to include this casting preference, as it is fundamental.”
Max Lewendel, the director, said the casting call that got leaked was a “draft” and the omission by the casting director was a “mistake.” It now asks for a female to play Juliet, “preferably of Jewish background.”
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism noted the apology is a step in the right direction, while still pointing out that the concept sounds like it’s in profoundly poor taste.
“We are glad to hear that an apology has been issued after it was revealed that a casting notice for a play about Jews and Nazis did not mention Jewish people,” the group said in a statement.
“We still struggle to think how this production could be anything but tasteless. It is staggering that anyone would find this play about morally equivalent feuding families to be an appropriate way to explore Nuremberg-era persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany.”
Indeed, the production almost sounds like the fake, deliberately offensive play-within-a-movie “Springtime for Hitler” from Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” although this time not designed to fail.
That said, it’s also worth noting that, in making something so conspicuously woke, the theater group seems to have covered every other identity base except for the one that was most important. At the very least, the omission reinforces the perception of a serious problem on the left: To progressives, Jews aren’t really that worthy of protection.
Major leftist figures have called Israel an “apartheid state” and “genocidal” — apparently forgetting the actual genocide which killed 6 million Jews during Hitler’s reign — and reports from college campuses say the woke crowd is using the same tactics on Jewish students.
“[T]he Left disguises their destructive attempts to cancel those whom they disagree with as merely ‘holding people accountable,’ because they’re too afraid of being held accountable for bullying people into silence. They easily weaponize ‘cancel culture’ against Jews, by touting the age-old tropes we have been dealing with for years — that we are all greedy and privileged, except this time, we’re considered white,” Justine Brooke Murray, a Campus Reform correspondent from Syracuse University, told The Western Journal last year after she went viral for criticizing campus leftists on their anti-Semitism.
“That’s why Jews are not considered high enough on the totem-pole of intersectionality to receive the victimhood status awarded to other minority groups. Today, Jews are hated for their nation state, and are labeled as right-wing ‘white supremacists’ unless they disavow Israel and shed their Zionism, which for most Jews is a major component of their faith.”
Is this what happened at the Icarus Theatre Collective? Without being on the inside, it’s difficult to say. That being noted, when a painfully woke project that reimagines “Romeo and Juliet” in Nazi Germany with “non-binary” actors made clear to specify what kind of oppressed minorities they were looking for in a casting call, yet left out the one minority that almost every living adult human knows the Third Reich took gruesome glee in systematically killing, it’s not difficult to reach that conclusion.
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