How Shakespeare became the ultimate rock star in Ontario's big summer musicals

That’s because it’s a refrain from the musical “Something Rotten!” in which Lillico played the famed 16th-century English playwright, a role he reprises this season.

“It’s such a joyful experience and a funny show that audiences just loved. I think people are eager to get back to it,” he said. The first time around, he met a fan who had seen the show 45 times.

When we talked last month, performances had not yet begun, but Lillico is likely in for another season of people stopping him on the street.

He was even recognized in Toronto last fall when he went to the Varsity cinema to see “Hamnet,” in which Irish movie star Paul Mescal plays William Shakespeare — one Bard watching another.

Meanwhile, at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre, George Krissa has been treading the boards as Shakespeare since December in the hit musical “& Juliet.”

Yes, the pride of Stratford-upon-Avon is having a moment — and not just for his own 38 theatrical works, which have been performed continuously for the last 400-plus years.

The allure of William

According to those behind these productions, there are two factors at play, if you’ll pardon the pun: how familiar we are with Shakespeare’s oeuvre, and how little we know about the man himself.

David West Read, who wrote the book “& Juliet,” pointed out that there are almost no hard facts about Shakespeare’s life. “We know he had three children, we know roughly when he was born and roughly when he died,” he said. “He is both this incredibly well-known figure, but also a blank canvas, open to interpretations.”

The appreciation for Shakespeare’s work translates into a desire to humanize him, according to Krissa. “We have a fascination with the kind of person who could come up with these words — and why shouldn’t we be fascinated?”

The Bard on screen

Shakespeare has been a character in pop culture before, of course.

Before “Hamnet,” which won an Academy Award in March for Jessie Buckley playing Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, the most well-known depiction was in the 1998 Oscar-winning movie “Shakespeare in Love.” In that film, Joseph Fiennes played Shakespeare as he fell for a noblewoman (Gwyneth Paltrow) and became inspired to write “Romeo and Juliet” for her.

The most controversial screen portrayal is undoubtedly Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous” (2011). Rafe Spall plays Shakespeare as but a lowly actor given credit for plays written secretly by the Earl of Oxford.

Director and frequent Shakespeare play-adapter Kenneth Branagh portrays the Bard in his final years in the 2018 film “All Is True.” He’s depicted reconciling with his wife and daughters in Stratford, and coming to terms with the death of his only son, an event also portrayed in “Hamnet.”

From page to stage

When Read began working on “& Juliet” in 2016, he was looking for a story to complement the songs of Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin. At first, he zeroed in on “Romeo and Juliet,” rather than its writer.

“Many people have talked about the somewhat problematic nature of a girl deciding to kill herself over a guy she’s known for three days, her first ever boyfriend,” Read said. posits a fresh ending for the Shakespeare tragedy in which Juliet doesn’t end her life. But Read also wanted to create characters to give voice to that new take, so he made Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, personalities in the musical. Anne asks her husband to change the ending of one of his most famous plays, and he pushes back.

“I liked the idea of William and Anne as the godlike figures fighting over what should happen with the characters,” Read said. “And then, the more I got into researching Shakespeare and thinking about him as a character, I realized there were these interesting parallels with Shakespeare and Max Martin … He was a popular artist of his time, creating pop art the way that Max Martin is today.”

In the case of “Something Rotten!” Shakespeare was baked into the concept in the mid-1990s when brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick began envisioning a musical about two writers struggling for success in the shadow of the Bard, sort of like a theatrical Mozart and Salieri.

“It took us about 14 years to get serious,” said Wayne, who had a successful music career while his brother was busy writing and directing movies.

“We (would) get together at Thanksgiving, Christmas, family things, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I had an idea for the Shakespeare thing,’” Karey said.

The musical, which went straight to Broadway in 2015, started to take shape in 2011, after the brothers pitched “Avenue Q” producer Kevin McCollum. They brought on British author and screenwriter John O’Farrell, who saw the potential for something new in Shakespeare’s story. “Everything changes, except human nature. You can look at the dilemmas of his characters and the feelings of his characters, and you can relate those to modern times and things that we’re going through,” said O’Farrell.

A writer and a rock star

“Something Rotten!” portrays Shakespeare as a writer — in the song “Hard to Be the Bard,” he bemoans the struggle to keep coming up with hits — but also as something familiar to 21st-century audiences: a rock star along the lines of Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley or James Brown.

“We were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if he enters like Elvis, and he has an entourage and he has a cape, and he throws it off?’” Karey said. “Then Wayne sent me this rock riff.” In that song, “Will Power,” Shakespeare celebrates his own celebrity, belting, “I am the Will with the skill to thrill you with my quill.”

Read also envisioned the “& Juliet” Shakespeare as a combination of insecure writer and musical deity. “He has a rock star entrance,” he said. “He either rises up from underneath the stage or enters from behind the sign in a cloud of smoke, but he is owning the stage like he’s at a rock concert.”

It’s a thrill for the actors who get to bring this hip-swivelling, quill-wielding idol to life. “I’m just having so much fun,” Lillico said. Before he took on the part in 2024, he read biographies like Stephen Greenblatt’s “Will in the World,” but he also watched concert films of artists like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

Krissa enjoys portraying Shakespeare both as the rock star of his day but also the villain of “& Juliet,” who messes with the plans of Anne and Juliet throughout the show. “He’s the main antagonist. He’s the one throwing wrenches into everything,” said Krissa. But “you have to like him … Finding that balance has been really, really fun.”

While Krissa has been careful to make this Shakespeare his own, the character is inspired, in part, by aging boy band members. “If I was playing a version of Justin Timberlake, everybody would be like, ‘Oh, what a weird Justin Timberlake impression.’ So I tried to bring that kind of energy, that kind of swagger, but keep it rooted in the reality of what’s happening (onstage),” he said.

It seems to be working. At recent performances of “& Juliet” and “Something Rotten!” the audiences loudly showed their appreciation of both Lillico’s and Krissa’s Bards.

“I’m sure my Shakespeare has nothing to do with who he actually was at the end of the day, but it’s pretty fun to (convey) the lasting power of the man,” said Lillico. “He could probably say he’s bigger than the Beatles.”

“& Juliet” plays the Royal Alexandra Theatre, 260 King St. W., until Aug. 30. See mirvish.com for tickets. “Something Rotten!” is at the Festival Theatre, 55 Queen St., Stratford, until Oct. 31. See stratfordfestival.ca for tickets. “Hamnet” can be streamed or rented at primevideo.com.