Producer Michael Cassel,who’s also behindHarry Potter and the Cursed Child andHamilton,said the songs on the show’s playlist,which includeI Want It That Way (Backstreet Boys),Baby One More Time (Britney Spears),Roar (Katy Perry),Can’t Stop the Feeling (Justin Timberlake),were “every big hit song that I loved and that I grew up with”.
The show’s writer,Emmy and Golden Globe winner David West Read,who served as an executive producer onSchitt’s Creek,said the idea for the show had come to him after he had concussed himself on a kitchen cabinet – “which kind of explains the story”.
He started from the premise that,just after Shakespeare finished writingRomeo and Juliet,“his wife surprised him in the rehearsal room and asked him why he needed to kill off his heroine who had only been with her boyfriend for three days – what if instead she chose to go on another adventure looking for love again”.
Record producer Max Martin said the idea for a musical based on pop songs he’d written had been suggested to him by his wife a decade ago.
His biggest priority,he said,was that “this wasn’t just a show that was put together to shoehorn in these hits”,so when he met the writer,he just gave him the song catalogue and said,‘you do it’.
Director Luke Sheppard,who went on a pop-concert-watching spree for research purposes,said the production uses cutting-edge sound design to immerse the audience in the music.