James Bond singing? Almost. Bull Durham dancing? Yes, indeed. The Song of Solomon--in song? Of course--what could be more natural? From spies to sports and from comics to the Bible, stage musicals are popping up based on anything and everything.
Out near Los Angeles, Ken Patton and Paul Duffy are moving into the workshop stage with their musical Dirty Martini, which pays homage to the James Bond spy genre. As Patton describes the story, "a boy and a girl pack a suitcase to go to the big city to be trained to be secret agents by the renowned spy, Rex Royalton. But when they get there, they find out that Rex has been captured, so they are basically training around the clock so they can go out and rescue him."
No one needed to rescue Bull Durham. Sports Illustrated named Ron Shelton's 1988 baseball movie starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon the #1 Greatest Sports Movie of all time. Tomorrow, Atlanta's Alliance Theatre stages the world premiere of a musical based on the film, with music and lyrics by Susan Werner.
Back in L.A., Rockwell Table and Stage just wrapped up the world premiere of Jagged Little Pill, an "immersive concert staging" of Alanis Morisette's 1995 breakthrough album with musical direction and arrangements by Jonah Platt. Of course, the show is billed as "an untamed ride through heartbreak, inner demons, and the power of Rock and Roll." It joins American Idiot and The Who's Tommy in the small but growing pantheon of albums turned into musicals.
Music stars themselves, both alive and dead, continue to provide fertile soil for the germination of new stage musicals. Next year Center Stage in Baltimore will debut Marley, a new musical about Bob Marley, the Jamaican reggae star and popularizer extraordinaire who died in 1981.
Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, about another entertainer who died young, is supposed to open at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre (former home of an obscure little musical based on, of all things, the poems of T.S. Eliot), although the Toronto Star reported today that the opening may be delayed pending the lining up of a famous-name performer to play the title role, with Joe Jonas rumored to be the performer in question.
And as we've been reporting, On Your Feet, the Emilio and Gloria Estefan bio-musical, is coming to Broadway next fall.
Across the Pacific, a new Sailor Moon musical will debut in Tokyo this month. Sailor Moon Petite étrangère follows the success of last year's highly successful musical Sailor Moon: Reconquista, also based on the long-running anime series.
And in New York, Salgado Productions is staging Song of Solomon, a new musical by Andrew Beall and Neil Van Leeuwen, based on the biblical Song of Songs. The story follows the "secret romance between King Solomon and a brilliant young vineyard girl, Almah, who inspires the most famous love poetry of all time. The stakes are Solomon's life, the woman he loves, and the fate of Israel."
The fate of just about everything these days is to become a stage musical. In a digital age dominated by video and the Internet, there's yet no shortage of creative souls out there turning any intellectual property they can get their hands on into theater--preferably the kind with singing and dancing. And who knows what unlikely source for a musical might end up becoming the next Spring Awakening--or even the next Cats?
