According to Deadline, George Roy Hill's Oscar-winning con-job flick The Sting, which starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman, is set to undergo the latest movie-to-Broadway adaptation.
If the show includes some of the famous Scott Joplin ragtime music which the late Marvin Hamlisch worked into the 1973 film's Oscar-winning score, it will follow a mini-trend of vintage music tinkling over Broadway. Songs from the 1920s and 1930s power Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, nominated for six Tony Awards this year. Nice Work If You Can Get It won two Tonys and three Drama Desk Awards in 2012 on the strength of George and Ira Gershwin's tunes. And of course there's the Billie Holiday biographical jukebox show Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, currently on Broadway starring Audra McDonald.
Ragtime music by Scott Joplin would be even older than any of that.
There's been no word on the score for the stage version of The Sting, though it's hard to imagine the classic story of two grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) conning a gangster boss (Robert Shaw) without the ragtime. Clues might be gleaned from the offbeat leanings of the creative talent engaged by the producing team. Deadline reports that Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) will work with Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann (Urinetown). Tony winners all.
In case you stumbled upon this article via searching not for the 1973 film The Sting but for the pop singer Sting, formerly of The Police, fear not--he's puncturing the Broadway floorboards too. The Last Ship, a new musical with a score by Sting and a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Brian Yorkey and Tony winner John Logan, opens its pre-Broadway run June 10 in Chicago, with Broadway previews beginning Sept. 29 towards an Oct. 26 opening.
