DEAD END Play to be Released as Musical Concept Album

The landmark Broadway stage play, "Dead End", has been adapted as a musical and produced as a concept album available for digital download on May 1st 2022. Neil Fishman (Music), Harvey Edelman (Lyrics), and Peter C. Palame (Book), began this dream project years ago and after a saga worthy of a Broadway musical of its own, have brought it to fruition.

The play, "Dead End" was written by the legendary playwright Sidney Kingsley, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and member of the Theater Hall of Fame. The musical was adapted and produced with the cooperation of the Kingsley Estate.

"Dead End the Musical" follows the first two audiobook musicals written by Mr. Edelman and Mr. Fishman. Published by Harper Collins, "Puss In Boots, a Musical", preceded by "Spin, the Rumpelstiltskin Musical, both featured the legendary Broadway performer, Jim Dale, and won AUDIE and multiple SOVAS awards. Teamed with Mr. Palame, with whom they wrote the wildly entertaining Off-Broadway show, "On the Air," "Dead End the Musical", takes their creative output to a new level.

"Dead End the Musical", set amongst the East Side tenements of Depression era New York, is a powerful and entertaining show that shines a light on the social ills of a time and place that still resonate today: hunger, poverty, crime, class struggle, and economic and social inequality. Based on the landmark 1935 play, subsequently made into an Academy Award nominated film starring Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Joel McCrea, and Sylvia Sidney, Dead End was also the genesis for the iconic Dead End Kids, spinning off a hundred movies and serials.

"Dead End the Musical" is a gritty, realistic story of a young woman seeking a better life for her and her teenage brother, an out of work architect envisioning a better world, a kept woman who clings to a rich man lest she slip back into poverty, and a wanted gangster returning to recapture the innocence of his childhood. All the while, a group of rich folks literally look down on this neighborhood from their adjacent luxury tower, as the neighborhood "Dead End Kids" provide the antics and fleeting escapist innocence.

The concept album of Dead End the Musical, to be released on a digital platform, has a cast of 16 Broadway caliber performers including fresh up and coming talent as the Dead End Kids. The cast includes such veterans as Michelle DellaFave, a regular on the television classic Dean Martin Show; David Edwards, known for, among other achievements, as the last El Gallo in the final New York production of The Fantastiks; Lisa Livesay, who has appeared as Glinda in Wicked on Broadway; and John E. Brady who appeared in Newsies on Broadway. The cast also includes Michael Isaac, Chelsea Lynne Myers, Claire McPartland, Jeff Essex, Michael J. Coppola, and Barrett Leddy, as well as Nick Williams, Declan Skaggs, Jake Stabinsky, Marco Velasquez, Tre Moore, and Aidan Perkins, as the Dead End Kids.

The album features twenty fully-orchestrated musical numbers, dramatic scenes, sound effects, and musical underscoring. There are lively ensemble numbers by the kids and adults alike, heartbreaking ballads, and comic relief numbers. The album running time is two hours and 56 minutes.