ANNE IMHOF’S DOOM: LOVE IN THE AGE OF APATHY

Gen-Z’s Romeo & Juliet is Here—and it’s Vaping.

Gen-Z’s Romeo & Juliet is here—drifting and staring into the abyss. Enter Anne Imhof, the ultimate German cool girl, art-world disruptor, and master of controlled chaos. Her latest spectacle, DOOM: House of Hope, takes over NYC’s Park Avenue Armory with a dystopian fever dream of love, loss, and late-stage capitalism. Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers get a radical makeover—swapping sonnets for silent apathy, Renaissance romance for Balenciaga-clad disillusionment. And as always with Imhof, it’s not just a performance—it’s a mood, a movement, and a mirror held up to our beautifully doomed times.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is the ultimate tragic love story, a tale of doomed romance that has been retold, reshaped, and reimagined for centuries. Whether through the original play, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 cult-classic Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, or through the brushstrokes of artists like Joseph Wright and Marc Chagall—we’ve all seen it in some form.

What we haven’t seen is Romeo and Juliet through a Gen-Z lens. Until now. A sprawling, three-hour spectacle, DOOM reimagines Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers in a world of dystopian excess, blending ballet, rap, photography, and drawing into a disjointed fever dream. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the production unfolds like a nihilistic prom night, set against a backdrop of gleaming black Cadillac SUVs and an ominous jumbotron counting down to… something. The nearly 50 performers, dressed in a Balenciaga-meets-Supreme aesthetic, vape, get tattoos, and stare into the void—lost in their own detached, digital realities. Romeo and Juliet as restless, apathetic Gen Zers, trapped in a loop of their own existential doom.

The Drill Hall itself becomes part of the experience, transforming into a sprawling, alternate universe where the audience is free to wander, record, and participate. Performers mirror their voyeurism, passing around a phone to film themselves and each other. Occasionally their intimate footage broadcasts in real-time on central screens. Imhof pulls from a wide range of inspirations—Jerome Robbins, Sinatra, Radiohead, Jean Genet—blurring the lines between theater, concert, and social experiment. Imhof’s DOOM is a collaborative effort, crafted with a large cast of creatives. The “leads” — a loose term in this ever-shifting production — are young actors Talia Ryder and Levi Strasser, who freely pull lines from Shakespeare’s text.

In this version, Romeo and Juliet becomes Romeos and Juliets. Multiple performers, across all genders, embody Romeo, while dancer Remy Young and ABT principal Devon Teuscher step in as Juliets. Imhof’s longtime collaborator and ex partner Eliza Douglas (Balenciaga muse) serves as assistant director, costume designer, and performer, further blurring the lines between art and fashion.

But as the night stretches on, murmurs of discontent emerge. A few hours in, clusters of diverse spectators along with who’s who in art guests and Gen-Zers hover around performers and scattered, ripped-up pieces of cardboard scrawled with phrases like “Help me, I’m trans”, “I want to disappear,” and “Don’t touch my tits.” The performance, some critics argue, lacks a clear political stance or revolutionary punch, instead indulging in style and aesthetics over substance.

But isn’t that exactly the point?

Imhof’s calculated sense of nihilism doesn’t ignore Gen-Z’s activism—it holds up a mirror to it. The deliberate absence of action, the performers’ constant posing instead of performing—perhaps that’s the most brilliant critique of all. A former nightclub bouncer and a Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner, Imhof has her finger firmly on the pulse of youth culture. Even as Gen Z sees itself as the generation of change—tackling climate collapse, social injustice, and systemic failure—they are also deeply entangled in the optics of it all. The aesthetic of activism, the performance of rebellion.

Maybe DOOM: House of Hope isn’t just a retelling of Romeo and Juliet—maybe it’s the real tragedy of our time.

Doom: House of Hope, continues at Park Avenue Armory (643 Park Avenue, UES) through March 12.