Photo Flash: New Line Theatre Presents BE MORE CHILL

You're offered a pill with a tiny supercomputer inside, to be taken with some Mountain Dew, and it will install a personalized voice inside your head that will tell you how to be cool.

Do you take it?

It's The Breakfast Club meets Little Shop of Horrors, as New Line closes its 28th season by bringing to St. Louis the new sci-fi rock musical BE MORE CHILL -- currently breaking records on Broadway! -- with music and lyrics by Joe Iconis and book by Joe Tracz, based on the bestselling novel by Ned Vizzini. It's an honest, fearless, funny look at life in the digital age, exploring teen depression, bullying, and other current issues through the comic lens of sci-fi films of the 50s, horror flicks of the 80s, and teen movies of the 90s.

The show has been selling out everywhere it runs, and it looks like it will here too.

In the story, Jeremy is just an average, nothing-special teenage nerd -- until he finds out about the Squip ("Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor"), a tiny Japanese supercomputer in a convenient pill, which promises to "upgrade" him and bring him everything he desires most: a date with Christine, an invite to the coolest party of the year, and a chance to survive life in his suburban New Jersey high school.

Be More Chill made its world premiere at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey in 2015, it's now being produced across the country, and it just opened on Broadway in March. A hit with audiences and critics alike, The New York Times writes "Be More Chill is one of the most popular musicals in America." The Wall Street Journal raves "you don't have to be a millennial to revel in the spunky charms of Be More Chill. See it now if you can wrangle a ticket, because it's going to hit big - deservedly so." The Hollywood Reporter says "uproarious laughter ...enjoyable, catchy, up-tempo numbers, so winning that it's hard to resist," and Vox calls Be More Chill "a sensation. ... wildly adored ...universal. ... The audience was screaming at every song." Variety writes "It's one thing to be told that Be More Chill is a viral hit on the internet. It's quite another to experience the hype live and in the room, where the audience explodes like it's at a rock concert. ...People have come from all around the country, if not all around the world to see it."

New Line secured the rights to the show before it transferred to Broadway.

New Line's cast includes Jayde Mitchell (Jeremy), Dominic Dowdy-Windsor (Squip), Kevin Corpuz (Michael), Grace Langford (Christine), Zachary Allen Farmer (Jeremy's Dad), Melissa Felps (Brooke), Evan Fornachon (Rich), Isabel Cecilia Garcia (Jenna), Ian McCreary (Jake), and Laura Renfro (Chloe). The show will be directed by Mike Dowdy-Windsor and Scott Miller, with music direction by Nicolas Valdez, choreography by Michelle Sauer and Sara Rae Womack, lighting and scenic design by Rob Lippert, costume design by Sarah Porter, and sound design by Ryan Day.

Produced by arrangement with Rodgers & Hammerstein Theatricals, New York.

Photo Credit: Jill Ritter Lindberg