THE HEART OF ROCK AND ROLL Hits Broadway After Years of Changes

Regular readers will know I’m in the middle of a series about award shows, but I'm skipping this week so I can write about the development of one of this spring’s jukebox musicals, The Heart of Rock and Roll. My old friend Gordon Greenberg (represented off-Broadway earlier this season with Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, which my guest loved so much she still talks about it) is directing it and I recently chatted with him about his decade-long involvement with the show.

We tend to think jukebox musicals come together quickly, but they usually do not. Hollywood guy Tyler Mitchell, a theater novice but a longtime Huey Lewis fan, first approached Lewis with the idea for a musical all the way back in 2009. It took a little convincing, but Lewis got on board (see the recent New York Times story on Lewis for more details on that). Mitchell recruited his friend, Jonathan A. Abrams, to develop the story with him and to draft the book. Then came the search for a director. There wasn’t anything unusual about how Greenberg was chosen—his agent called and asked if he wanted to meet for the gig. Mitchell, then the sole producer, met with a few directors; Greenberg ended up with the job.

“We all shared this vision of creating something that had that feeling of 1980s optimism,” Greenberg said.

Greenberg went into the project thinking if done right it could introduce the next generation to the music he loved growing up. But, to do that, the show needed to be good. Especially with Abrams and Mitchell both new to musical theater, there was work to be done. Abrams asked Greenberg to send him books of relevant musicals. Greenberg selected Mammia Mia! because he thought Heart was “going to be in that world,” Hairspray, Kinky Boots, Holiday Inn because he co-wrote it, and style outlier Fiddler on the Roof simply because he loves it.

Orchestrator/arranger Brian Usifer, who had previously worked with Stephen Oremus on Kinky Boots, joined the team. There was a reading in a tiny rehearsal room in New York featuring current cast member Orville Mendoza and known names who have long since left, such as Orfeh.

Then, eventually, Greenberg brought it to Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. Even though Edelstein has been a "mentor and dear friend" to Greenberg, Greenberg said Edelstein didn’t immediately book the show.

“He looked at the script and had questions and I met with him and Jon Abrams in LA and had a whole talk about where we all saw the piece going,” Greenberg explained. “For two years, he really took us under his wing and helped dramaturgically develop this show.”

The team was obviously all working on other things while development was going on, but they kept working. Unless you know theater people, it’s hard to understand how little money is distributed during the development process. It takes love and commitment.

“During this time, it was all about shooting drafts back and forth and getting to a place where we felt like there was a solid plot,” Greenberg said. “Each of the characters, each time we returned to the material, it was like adding another coat of paint or growing roots, not branches. Because there is a lot of trick stuff you do to put on a musical so ultimately it’s delicious and confectionery, like a box of macarons from Ladurée, but it also needs depth and truth and flesh and blood.”

So a party girl went from just being a party girl to one who had recently had a baby with all the complications that entails. And I haven’t seen Heart of Rock and Roll yet, so I can’t tell you if I’m going to agree with everything they decided to do or not do, but I always appreciate the effort that goes into making shows. Here, the team knew jubilation was the ultimate goal, but the team also believed you had to root for these characters in order to feel that jubilation. The music only takes you so far. The history of jukebox musicals tells us that.

The music is of course important though, as is working the music into the storyline, and using it to drive the storyline and/or the characters. One of the things the team felt it needed in the show is an “I Want” song; unfortunately, the creatives didn't find a good fit in the Huey Lewis catalog. So Lewis, Huey Lewis and the News bandmate Johnny Colla, and Usifer wrote a new song during development, “Be Someone.”

The show premiered at The Old Globe in fall of 2018.

“We opened and then reconvened two to three weeks later with another draft continuing to tweak it,” Greenberg said. “It was not a wholesale rewrite but, again, more specificity, more getting rid of the stuff we didn’t need, and leaning into things that were actually helpful to the story. So we did rehearsals and we put in those changes—it was at some expense, for all of us to fly back and spend another week with them and work overtime, but that helped.”

After that run, in 2019, there was another developmental production in New York. It featured significant rewrites and a lot more dance. It was then that producer Hunter Arnold signed on.

During fundraising for Broadway, the world changed. Coming out of the pandemic, one of the changes to the show was to make clear it took place in the 1980s. Greenberg said previously it took place in the “vague now,” meaning that while there was no cell phone use or truly modern references, there was also no reference to when it took place. By the time the last developmental production happened this past summer, Heart was very specifically situated in the 1980s. The show currently on Broadway leans heavily into the 1980s aesthetic in its design.

As I write this, The Heart of Rock and Roll is being frozen, meaning the many changes will finally cease. Its opening night party is this week, though it officially opens on Broadway April 22 (the first night of Passover). Greenberg will already be overseas by the time the critics weigh in, he has to be in London to finish casting The Baker’s Wife for a summer run at Menier Chocolate Factory. No matter what the press says though, Greenberg hears the audience and feels like he’s done his job.

“Honestly, I feel like we have one mission and that's to deliver joy,” he stated. “Anything that doesn't we’ve kind of been getting rid of. Now joy involves truth and heart and humanity too, but all of that is what we’ve tried to make the show.”

Industry Trends Weekly is a short column that runs in the weekly Industry Pro Newsletter. To read past columns and subscribe click here. If you have an idea for the column, you can reach the author at cara@broadwayworld.com.