As a tour of the hit musical & Juliet was being planned last year, DeSoto native Rachel Simone Webb says she asked the producers to cast her in the lead role on Broadway. She had been in the ensemble and an understudy for Juliet since the original British production spawned a North American version.
Nominated for nine Tony Awards, the twist on Shakespeare’s defining tragedy is still running in New York three years after it opened there. It’s built around more than two dozen pop songs written or produced by Max Martin for acts like the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, Celine Dion, Pink and Justin Timberlake. The premise poses a question: What if Juliet didn’t kill herself?
Webb wound up with the role but on the road. She’s about to return home as the tour arrives at the Music Hall at Fair Park for a 13-day stand, presented by Broadway Dallas.
I reached out, and they said yes,” she explains in a phone interview from an earlier stop in New Orleans. “I had a lot of practice because I was able to go on more than 150 times on Broadway as Juliet. It was something I could use to say, ‘I’ve built up the stamina to lead your show. I’m drawn to the role. How would you feel if I assumed it?’ I was actually asking for it on Broadway. But the tour was going out, and they needed a Juliet.”
A singer in church and at talent shows and school functions most of her life, Webb moved to New York City in 2021 shortly after graduating with a degree in musical theater from Texas State University. Ironically, the first job she landed was back in North Texas in a production of Smokey Joe’s Café at Casa Mañana Theatre in Fort Worth.
Webb had always hoped to be a professional singer. She performed in the musicals Aida at DeSoto High School and Hair at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. But she thought of musical theater as more as a hobby than a career path until her senior year.
“Musical theater hadn’t been on my radar at all. I appreciated it, but I didn’t really think that it could make me money and I could live off of it,” Webb says. “At Texas State, I learned that this art form is so deep, so rich in tradition. I knew I wanted to sing, I knew I wanted to perform on stage when I was 11 years old. But it was in those four years that I was able to cultivate not only a passion, but also a skill set for the theatrical arts. I realized I had to believe in myself.”
Her mother, Sheila, part of a family singing group, was her first teacher. Webb’s first breakthroughs came during summer intensives from 2009 to 2016 studying with founder Curtis King at the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in downtown Dallas. The three-week sessions culminated with a series of live performances in front of an audience.
It’s where Webb learned to be comfortable on stage, she says. She fondly remembers taking on the soaring ballad “I Will Always Love You” and “I Am Changing” from Dreamgirls. In high school, she learned to read music and sight-sing. At Texas State, she appeared in plays as wells as musicals, including Guys and Dolls, The Tempest, Ragtime and Intimate Apparel. Besides & Juliet and Smokey Joe’s Café, she’s also performed in Hairspray at Theatre Aspen, the film Evinced and on tour as a featured singer in Kristin Chenoweth’s revue For the Girls.
She describes & Juliet as a remix of the original. “It’s a retelling of Juliet’s story from her perspective, as if she decided not to end her life. We follow her journey from leaving her parents to finding herself outside of all of these obstacles. It’s a self-love journey. It’s funny. Romeo and Juliet is definitely a tragedy. But though there are dramatic things that happen, this is a comedy. It begins with Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, rewriting the story of Juliet together.”
Webb was first cast in 2022 in the Toronto production that moved to Broadway following successful runs in Manchester and the West End of London. Now 26, she was born around the time the oldest songs in the show were first released. But she was familiar with most of them.
“You hear them in Target, you hear them in Walmart, you hear them in the elevator,” she says. “It’s also odd because we think of these songs as frothy pop tunes. The idea that these hits by Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys could all come together — yes, it’s comedic. But there’s also a point to it. One of Juliet’s most heart-wrenching moments is when she sings ... Baby One More Time but as a ballad. She’s mourning her lover with a Britney Spears song and the fact that he died in front of her. It’s funny at first, but then at the end you realize she’s really in pain.”
Webb finds playing the role empowering.
“The text, the songs and the dance moves, everything really informs how I live as a person,” she says. “As a young Black woman, sometimes I feel overlooked, sometimes I feel disadvantaged. It’s a role that continues to give back to me as an actress. I love seeing the responses of the people in the audience. They’ve been moved. They see a different side of themselves. The responses from young girls, young Black girls, young people of color, it’s overwhelming.”
Webb says she’s grateful to be performing in the show in Dallas. “All of us in the cast have our own hometowns, so when we go back each of us are our hometown hero. And that’s one of my favorite parts about the success of it.”
Details
Jan. 28-Feb. 9 at 909 First Ave. $30-$190. broadwaydallas.org.
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