EGN NEWS DESK
Darren Criss, who parlayed a breakout position on “Glee” right into a multifaceted profession in tv, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a brand new musical that’s nominally about robots however can also be about life, love and loss.
The present, “Maybe Happy Ending,” is a rarity for Broadway: a totally authentic musical — not tailored from a pre-existing story or tune catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two different actors within the musical, which is ready in Seoul within the late twenty first century and is about two outmoded helperbots who meet at a robotic retirement house and forge a relationship whereas grappling with their very own obsolescence.
The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an preliminary Korean-language manufacturing in Seoul in 2016, and an English-language manufacturing in Atlanta, on the Alliance Theater, in 2020, the place Jesse Green, a New York Times chief theater critic, referred to as it “a captivating, Broadway-ready new musical about robots in love.”
The Broadway manufacturing, introduced Tuesday, will probably be directed by Michael Arden, who additionally directed the Atlanta manufacturing, and who final 12 months received a Tony Award for guiding a revival of “Parade.” “Maybe Happy Ending” is scheduled to start previews Sept. 18 and to open Oct. 17 on the Belasco Theater.
“It’s an odd, futuristic take a look at love, with a lovely rating that feels fairly traditional,” Arden stated in a phone interview. “When I first learn it I discovered it completely devastating and heartbreaking and exquisite — it was some of the human tales I’d come throughout, regardless that our leads aren’t human.”
Criss, an Emmy winner for “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” final appeared on Broadway in a 2022 revival of “American Buffalo”; he had beforehand starred in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
“Maybe Happy Ending” would be the first Broadway present for Shen, who’s at the moment in “The Lonely Few” at Off Broadway’s MCC Theater. Criss and Shen will play the robots; the forged may even embrace Dez Duron, a onetime contestant on “The Voice.”
“Maybe Happy Ending” is being capitalized for $18.25 million, based on a submitting with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But a spokeswoman for the manufacturing stated the precise funds may be decrease; she stated the producers are looking for to lift between $16 million and $18.25 million to finance the present.
The musical’s lead producers are Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, who on Friday introduced that also they are among the many producers of a brand new Off Broadway play, “N/A,” starring Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe. That play, written by Mario Correa and directed by Diane Paulus, is to start previews June 11 and to open June 23 on the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. The play, described in a information launch as impressed by actual individuals and occasions, is about tensions between the primary feminine speaker of the House and the youngest girl elected to Congress; the characters have parallels to Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
