New Line Theatre, "the Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," will open the company's season of rock theatre in October 2011 with the St. Louis premiere of PASSING STRANGE, the all-black Broadway musical about a young man searching for meaning and authenticity in our contemporary world. Conceived and written by singer-songwriter and performance artist Stew and his collaborator Heidi Rodewald (who were just here in St. Louis recently with their band The Negro Problem), loaded with soulful lyrics and overflowing with passion, this daring, often very funny new musical takes us from Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Berlin and beyond, on a journey towards personal and artistic authenticity, across boundaries of place, identity and theatrical convention. A popular performer at Joe's Pub in New York, Stew was commissioned by The Public Theater to develop this heartfelt, funny story of a young bohemian who charts a course for "The Real" through sex, drugs and rock and roll. The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score, and it won the Tony for Best Book of a Musical.
Stew says on the show's website, "We have G.W. Bush to thank for this play. Seriously. When I found out that he had never been to Europe in his youth (or in his adulthood until he became prez!!!) I immediately knew I wanted to write a play about a kid who wanted to go to Europe. That fact about Bush said a lot to me about America's lack of interest in anything foreign except that which it can exploit (always to exploit - never to learn from). Can you imagine an uber-privileged billionaire's son from any other country that would not have been curious enough to travel to a foreign country or two or three or twenty? Especially when you're talking the kind of money where you already own a few airplanes yourself? As someone whose experience abroad informed and shaped my very being and consciousness about everything from sexuality, politics, culture, language and human nature, I became obsessed with this factoid and decided this incuriosity was at the heart of the war. I realized that we are actually suffering the results of Bush's and his cronies' incuriousness... their dimwitted foreign policy time and again shows that beneath it all these fuckers don't even care about trying to understand the world they wish to dominate."
New Line's season will continue in March 2012 with the American regional premiere of the rockabilly Broadway musical CRY-BABY, which The Wall Street Journal called "the funniest new musical since Avenue Q." The musical is based on the cult classic
John Waters film starring
Johnny Depp. The original creative team is reworking and re-orchestrating the show for New Line, to make it a smaller, more intimate musical, and it will run here for four weeks in spring 2012.
CRY-BABY has a score by
David Javerbaum and
Adam Schlesinger, and a book by
Mark O'Donnell and
Thomas Meehan. O'Donnell and Meehan also adapted
John Waters' Hairspray for the musical stage. CRY-BABY focuses on teenager Allison Vernon-Williams in 1954 Baltimore, right at the birth of rock and roll, who wanders across the tracks from her square boyfriend and finishing-school life into a relationship with the orphaned Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker, the leader of a pack of "bad kids." The musical premiered at the
La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in November 2007 and opened on Broadway in April 2008. It was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Choreography. It was also nominated for Best Musical by the Drama League and the Outer Critics Circle Awards.
The season will close in June 2012 with the return of one of New Line's biggest hits, HIGH FIDELITY, with a book by
David Lindsay-Abaire, music by
Tom Kitt (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of "Next to Normal"), and lyrics by
Amanda Green. In 2008, New Line presented the American regional premiere of the show, which won raves all around. Mark Bretz of The Ladue News named it the best local show of the year. New Line was the first company outside New York to produce this smart, funny show about America's new Lost Generation and the music they live their lives to. This is a genuine rock and roll score, inspired by and peppered with musical references to some of the great rock and pop artists of our time, the muscular American rock sound of
Bruce Springsteen, the raw rage of Guns N' Roses, the Eastern experiments of
George Harrison and The Beatles, the intellectual playfulness of The Talking Heads, the fierce defiance of
Aretha Franklin, the smoky groove of Percy Sledge, the naked emotion of
Ben Folds, the driving cynicism of
Billy Joel.
Since New Line produced High Fidelity in 2008, more than a dozen other companies around the country have come to New Line to get in contact with that show's creators to secure production rights. New Line brought this brilliant show back to life after its rejection by the New York critics, and we hope to do the same for Cry-Baby.
Tickets for the 2011-2012 season will go on sale in August 2011.
New Line Theatre is a professional company dedicated to involving the people of the St. Louis region in the exploration and creation of daring, provocative, socially and politically relevant works of musical theatre. New Line Theatre was created in 1991 at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre just starting to take hold across the country. New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life many shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 60 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the prestigious Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and the Missouri
Arts Council. For more about New Line, go to www.newlinetheatre.com/contact.html
Next up in New Line's 20th anniversary season is "Two Gentlemen of Verona," the rock musical, running March 3-26, 2011, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, at 8:00 p.m., at the Washington University South Campus Theatre (formerly CBC High School), 6501 Clayton Road, just east of Big Bend. March 3 is a preview. Tickets are on sale now through all Metrotix outlets, including Macy's stores, the Fox Theatre, the Edison Theatre at Washington University, and select Schnucks stores, or by calling 314-534-1111. This show contains adult content. The season closes June 2-25 with the regional premiere of "bare," the pop opera.
For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.
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