New Line Theatre Presents CRY BABY

The Wall Street Journal called it "the funniest new musical since Avenue Q." New Line Theatre, "The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," has been granted the first production rights in the country for the American regional premiere of the Broadway rockabilly musical CRY-BABY, based on John Waters' cult classic film starring Johnny Depp. The original creative team is revising the show for New Line, to make it a smaller, more intimate musical, and it will run here next season, for four weeks in spring 2012.
 
As it was with New Line Theatre's American regional premiere of High Fidelity, New Line will mount the first production of CRY-BABY since its Broadway run. And like the company did for the under-appreciated High Fidelity, the New Liners hope to give CRY-BABY new life as well. Since New Line produced High Fidelity in 2008, more than a dozen other companies have come to New Line to get in contact with that show's creators to secure production rights.
 
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.
 
CRY-BABY 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 show received mixed reviews, but some critics fully understood the outrageous, subversive social satire the creative team had crafted. Terry Teachout, in the Wall Street Journal, wrote "You want funny? I'll give you funny, or at least tell you where to find it: Cry-Baby, the new John Waters musical, is campy, cynical, totally insincere and fabulously well crafted. And funny. Madly, outrageously funny. It is, in fact, the funniest new musical since Avenue Q. If laughter is the best medicine, then Cry-Baby is the whole damn drugstore." Newsday called the show "pleasantly demented and -- deep in the sweet darkness of its loopy heart -- more true to the cheerful subversion of a John Waters movie than its sentimental big sister Hairspray." The New Jersey Star-Ledger called it, "candy for adults who like their musicals nutty -- and not so nice."
 
David Javerbaum is a comedy writer and former executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He was hired as a staff writer there in 1999, promoted to head writer in 2002 and became an executive producer in 2006. He has won eleven Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards and Television Critics Association Awards for both Best Comedy and Best News Show. He was also one of the three principal authors of The Daily Show's textbook parody America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which won the 2005 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Javerbaum became a consulting producer at the start of 2009 and spent the next 18 months spearheading the writing of that book's sequel, Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race, which was released in September 2010. He left the show in July 2010. Javerbaum is an alumnus of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He also graduated from Harvard University where he wrote for the humor magazine The Harvard Lampoon and served as lyricist and co-bookwriter for two productions of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Later, he spent three years contributing headlines to The Onion, and is credited as one of the writers for Our Dumb Century. He also wrote for The Late Show with David Letterman from 1998-99. Javerbaum and Schlesinger also collaborated on eight original Christmas songs for Stephen Colbert's 2008 television special, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, for which he won a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. He was the lyricist and co-bookwriter of Suburb, which was nominated for Outer Critics' Circle and Drama League awards for Best Off-Broadway Musical in 2001. He won the $100,000 Ed Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics in 2005. His first book as sole author, the pregnancy satire What to Expect When You're Expected: A Fetus's Guide to the First Three Trimesters, was released in October 2009.
 
Adam Schlesinger is an American songwriter, composer and record producer. He has been nominated for Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy (3 noms, 1 win), and Golden Globe Awards. He is the bassist for the rock bands Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, and Tinted Windows. He is an owner of Scratchie Records and Stratosphere Sound, a recording studio in New York City. Schlesinger was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for writing the title track of the Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do! as well as two other songs for the film. Fountains of Wayne was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2003 for Best New Artist and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
 
Thomas Meehan is an award-winning librettist who wrote the books for Hairspray, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Annie, Ain't Broadway Grand, and coming to Broadway this fall, Elf: The Musical. He is also a long-time contributor of humor to The New Yorker, an Emmy Award-winning writer of television comedy, and a collaborator on a number of screenplays, including Mel Brooks' Spaceballs, the remake of To Be or Not to Be, and the musical film adaptation of The Producers.
 
Mark O'Donnell is also an alumni of Harvard University, where he was a member of the Harvard Lampoon and the writer and librettist for three Hasty Pudding musicals. O'Donnell and Meehan shared the 2003 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical for their work on Hairspray, and they wrote that show's 2007 film adaptation. O'Donnell's novels include Getting Over Homer and Let Nothing You Dismay. Along with Bill Irwin, he wrote Scapin, a 1997 play adapted from the original by Molière.
 
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 was created back 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 several shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 58 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the 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 
 
New Line's current show, I Love My Wife, runs through Oct. 23, 2010, 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. Tickets are on sale through Metrotix.com and all Metrotix outlets, including the Fox Theatre Box Office, the Edison Theatre at Washington University, and select Schnucks stores, or by calling 314-534-1111.
 
For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.