With Josh O’Connor and Lupita Nyong’o, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ speaks to our fractured society

William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” has maintained its centuries-long hold on the popular imagination for an obvious reason. But reencountering the play in new formats — “Romeo y Julieta,” the Public Theater’s bilingual podcast version and the National Theatre’s original film “Romeo & Juliet” — I see more clearly that romance is only half the answer. The idea for the musical came from Jerome Robbins, the show’s director and choreographer, who shared his idea for a “Lower East Side Story” with composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Arthur Laurents. The societal context for “West Side Story” was central to the musical because, like “Romeo and Juliet,” the tragedy is not a private affair that belongs exclusively to the lovers and their families. When Romeo, after secretly marrying Juliet, encounters truculent Tybalt, he tells him, “I do protest I never injured thee,/But love thee better than thou canst devise,/Till thou shall know the reason of my love.” Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, still furious that Romeo had the audacity to sneak his way into the Capulet ball, is spoiling for a fight.