Me and Juliet premiered in 1953 and was considered a modest success — it ran for much of a year on Broadway and had a limited run in Chicago (altogether nearly 500 performances), and returned a small profit to its backers.

Extensive revisions during the remaining Cleveland and Boston tryouts failed to fix the difficulties with the plot, which the critics considered weak and uninteresting.

Bill Hayes, the show's star, states in his autobiography Like Sands Through the Hourglass (2005): "We played nearly five hundred performances, all to full houses.

So, though not in the same category as the storied five that were made into films - Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music - our show must be considered a success".

[3] Rodgers also saw it as the opportunity to write a pure musical comedy, without the serious themes which had marked their early works—such as the attacks on racism in South Pacific, and the cultural tolerance in The King and I.

[6][8] The two discussed the matter at a meeting in early 1952 in Palm Beach, Florida, where Rodgers was vacationing as he worked on melodic sketches for the television documentary Victory at Sea.

[13] According to author and composer Ethan Mordden in his book about the duo's works, Hammerstein thought the show-within-the-show was to be: something bizarre, to stand out and amaze us, the better to set off the plain life of the actor ... We shall imagine some rather advanced musical of the near future, something beyond even Allegro, with archetypical characters—a simple hero and his lovable Juliet, the rapacious Don Juan and his volatile Carmen.

[15] Hammerstein stated, "we were religious in keeping away from the trite things—the kindly old stage door man named Pop, the pretty little understudy who replaces the star on opening night.

Don Walker was hired to do the orchestrations; his would be simpler than those of Robert Russell Bennett, who usually performed that function in the pair's musicals but who was not available.

Arrangements were made to shift South Pacific to the Broadway Theatre though, due to schedule conflicts, this meant moving that show to Boston for five weeks.

[10] The entire action of the show takes place in and close to a Broadway theatre in which the long-running musical Me and Juliet  (the "show-within-the-show") is playing.

Jeanie practices for her own audition ("No Other Love"), and Larry tells her that the audience will accept her if she's "a real kid" like Juliet, but reject her if she's a "phony" ("The Big Black Giant").

Mac enters, grasps the situation, sends Larry away, then puts the tray back in Jeanie's hands and pushes her onstage.

The perspective shifts to the onstage action in Me and Juliet, where Don Juan and Carmen are on a date ("We Deserve Each Other"), before moving to the manager's office where Larry and Jeanie are hiding out ("I'm Your Girl").

As Lily has had to leave, Jeanie stands in for her as Juliet, while Larry sings the part of Me in the scene, as the curtain falls ("Finale of Our Play").

The cast consisted mostly of unknowns, though Isabel Bigley, who had just originated Sister Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, was given the leading role of chorus girl Jeanie.

[17] William Tabbert, the original Lt. Joe Cable in South Pacific was considered for the part of Larry, but lost out because he was thought to be too tall to be afraid of Mark Dawson, hired as the towering bully Bob.

[21] Abbott had few negative comments after the final New York run-through, and the company entrained for Cleveland, site of the first tryouts, in high spirits, sleeping little on the train ride.

The dress rehearsal the night before the initial performance revealed a number of problems with the show; during the first act alone, Hammerstein dictated eight pages of notes.

[20] Hammerstein had intended to omit the overture, with the audience to watch, after the curtain rose, a blank stage on which the play-within-the-play performers and crew drifted in and began their preparations.

[20] In contrast to the levity on their first train ride, the company was downcast and exhausted en route from Cleveland to Boston for the final tryouts.

After watching it performed by Joan McCracken, who played Betty (Carmen in the play-within-the-play), the pair decided it had too many double entendres and cut it.

[29] According to Frederick W. Nolan in his book about the duo's works, "despite a $500,000 advance sale, despite a ten-month run (which, for anyone except Rodgers and Hammerstein, would have represented a major success), and despite an eventual profit in excess of $100,000, Me and Juliet has to be classed as a failure".

So, though not in the same category as the storied five that were made into films - Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music - our show must be considered a success.

At the time Rodgers wrote the score, a Latin dance craze had swept the United States, and its influence found its way into the music for Me and Juliet.

[43] "Intermission Talk", the chatter among audience members early in the second act, is given a bouncy melody and sly references to a number of shows then on Broadway—including the duo's own The King and I.

[48] The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson praised the acting and choreography, but stated, "This is their Valentine to show business, expressed in the form of a show-within-a-show; and it has just about everything except an intelligible story.

"[27] George Jean Nathan of the Journal American stated that "Hammerstein's book has the effect of hanging idly around waiting for an idea to come to him.

"[29] Robert Coleman of the Daily Mirror noted, "Having set new high standards for musicals throughout the world, Rodgers and Hammerstein dipped into the lower drawer of their desk for Me and Juliet.

"[54] Composer and author Ethan Mordden, in his book on the duo's works, wrote of the conceptual difficulties which Rodgers and Hammerstein had with the musical: [Me and Juliet] was the first of their plays without a powerful sense of destiny, of characters consequentially interconnected.