Utah performer wins raves in 'Romeo and Juliet' parody

Natalie Hill, a Utah County native who has performed across the Wasatch Front and was a Deseret News-KSL Sterling Scholar finalist in speech-drama in 1999, has been earning rave reviews for a new musical parody of "Romeo and Juliet."

The show premiered in Miami in January and is now playing at the renowned Papermill Playhouse in Milburn, N.J., where it continues through March 23. Hill is playing the second half of the title role in "Romeo and Bernadette," which moves Shakespeare's classic romantic drama into the 1960s. The producers are hopeful that the show may eventually move to Broadway.

Hill — whose father, Rich Hill, is a founder of the Provo Theatre Company — is no stranger to modern incarnations of the Shakespearean classic. Among her previous roles are both Maria and Anita in "West Side Story," the landmark Broadway musical that placed the Bard's characters in the middle of New York's teenage gang violence.

In "Romeo and Bernadette" the gangs aren't teenage punks. They're Brooklyn mobsters.

The premise for this new version is built around Romeo waking up from a very deep sleep 500 years after taking what must have been an extremely potent sleeping potion. Out on the streets, he glimpses Bernadette — on a trip to Verona with her parents. (Her father is head of a big Brooklyn mob.) Convinced that she's really Juliet, he follows Bernadette and her family to America. Once here, he gets mixed up with a rival mob, and complications ensue.

Hill, accompanied by her mother and her sister (a photographer who has shot some of Natalie's publicity stills), stopped by the Deseret News while she was in Utah for a few days, after the show had closed in Miami and was in the process of moving to New Jersey.

The busy young actress said her music in the production has a Connie Francis sound. With its 1960s setting, there's a sort of "Guys and Dolls" look. But most of the mobsters' songs have been adapted from old Neapolitan tunes in the public domain (with no royalties attached).

Hill, who moved to New York several months ago, had been called to audition for a role in "Gypsy" (a show she also did at Sundance). Then her agent set up an audition for "Romeo and Bernadette." "They had already done one reading of it and had another Bernadette in mind," Hill said, "but they also had a new director and he wanted to see who else was out there.