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    Casey Likes of ‘Back to the Future,’ Is on a Roll

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    “I either suck or I’m awesome,” Casey Likes said as he entered Frames, a snazzy bowling alley tucked into a corner of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. “There is no in-between.”It was shortly after 11 p.m. on a recent Thursday, and Likes, 21, the toothy, wholesome star of the Broadway musical adaptation of “Back to the Future,” was there to bowl as part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.With the alley closed to the public, he strode into the room like the boy-mayor of the place, resplendent in an ultramarine bowling shirt. On his first lap, he greeted friends from “MJ” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” then paused at the bar to order a drink and some fries. He maintains a strict anti-inflammatory diet during the week, but on bowling nights he lets that regime slide. Fries collected, he turned to join some other friends. Clowning, he accidentally streaked a colleague’s hair with ketchup, then helped to clean it. This clumsiness is not new to him. At the opening night party for his Broadway debut, “Almost Famous,” he spilled soda on Joni Mitchell.Thursday night strikes: Likes is part of a league comprising teams from current and former Broadway shows.George Etheredge for The New York TimesNot many young men can claim that honor. And only a handful have led two Broadway musicals before their 22nd birthday. But Likes has. A mix of the extraordinary and perfectly ordinary, he is a boy-next-door type, as sincere as sunlight, as unthreatening as oatmeal, who can still command a Broadway stage.“He found his way there because of pure joy,” Cameron Crowe, who worked with him on “Almost Famous,” said. “And that joy is infectious.”Likes grew up in Chandler, Ariz., a medium-size city southeast of Phoenix. His mother, a former Broadway actress, managed a theater there, and Likes has been onstage since he was 3, playing Tiny Tim to his mother’s Mrs. Cratchit. He also appeared in several local commercials. Sometimes people ask him when he knew he wanted to be an actor. The better question: When didn’t he?He continued acting all through his childhood. He couldn’t help it. When his elementary school told him that he couldn’t play another lead because other students should have a chance, he headed up the tech crew. In the summer after his junior year of high school, having already starred as Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables” and Jack in a youth theater production of “Newsies,” he was invited to participate in the Jimmy Awards, a competition for high school musical theater students held in New York City. He didn’t win, but his solo (he performed “Santa Fe” from “Newsies”) caught the attention of a casting director of the Broadway-bound musical “Almost Famous,” who brought him in for an audition. Likes, then 17, attended exactly one day of his senior year, then flew out to join a workshop, completing high school online.Roger Bart, left, as Doc Brown, and Likes as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which is onstage now at the Winter Garden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSolea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane and Likes as William Miller in “Almost Famous,” a stage adaptation of the film that had a short run last fall at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the musical’s brief run at the Old Globe in San Diego and a pandemic pause, it opened on Broadway last year with Likes as William, a teenage journalist trailing a volatile roots rock band. He was the baby of the show, by several years, which made his experience not so different from William’s — awestruck, out of his element, sometimes lonely.Though the reviews for the show were generally unenthusiastic (“You can say bad,” Likes said), critics described Likes as appealing, endearing, and as his name demands, likable. The actor felt pressure, wholly self-imposed, to live up to those notices. Toward the end of the run, he began to experience what he describes as unrelated health problems.“I was worried,” he said. “I was like, ‘Are people going to be disappointed in me?’”When “Almost Famous” closed, he had planned to take some time off to recover. Instead he was quickly offered “Back to the Future,” another musical based on a popular film. Another musical that kept him constantly onstage. He didn’t hesitate. “If you asked me at any point in my life, ‘Do you want to play Marty McFly on Broadway?’ The answer is obviously yes,” he said. “Like, duh.”“I’ve been waiting for this community,” Likes said. “I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesJohn Rando, who directed the “Back to the Future” musical, hired Likes for his youth, his amiability, his soulful rock tenor. Once previews began, he was also impressed with the confidence that Likes brought to the role and his effortless engagement with viewers.“Part of his charm is that he’s fearless with an audience,” Rando said.Likes knows that he has to get the audience on his side, smile by smile, note by note. And he feels that he has to pay homage to the actors who created the roles he plays (Patrick Fugit in the “Almost Famous” movie, Michael J. Fox in the “Back to the Future” franchise), while making the parts his own.“That might be my little hidden superpower,” he said. “To be able to take the things that made them iconic, distill them and put them in a little smoothie with all the things that make me special.”A particular flair for bowling is not necessarily one of those things, though Likes did say that at the previous week’s outing he had bowled a strike. This week the “Back to the Future” team, the Pinheads, would play the “Kimberly Akimbo” team, Pinberly Akimbowl. (Other team names of current Broadway shows: Hamilpins, Some Strike It Hot, Sweet Spareolines and, from “Moulin Rouge,” Bowlhemians.)Asked if his co-star Roger Bart (who plays Doc Brown) was on the team, Likes shook his head and laughed. (As Bart said, in a recent interview, “He’s got one of the great laughs. And the biggest, most contagious smile.”) People like Bart, Broadway veterans with families, don’t come out to bowl. They leave that to their younger colleagues, such as Likes.“I just want friends!” Likes said.Bowling night seems to be more about hobnobbing than actually bowling. “I’ve never played a full game,” Likes said. George Etheredge for The New York TimesIndeed, Likes was so busy hobnobbing that he neglected to register with his team and the game was already in progress when he found them at their assigned lane. Apparently this happens often. Asked about the rules of the league, Likes shook his head. “I’ve never played a full game so I truly do not understand,” he said.An ensemble member allowed him to sub in for one frame. Likes approached the foul line with his typical ease, then bowled a three. (In the interest of fairness, his score was then erased and the frame was bowled again.) He shrugged it off and fed some French fries to a castmate. Two other colleagues staged an impromptu dance-off, trading pirouettes and arabesques.“I just love it. I love the vibes,” Likes said.The evening wore on. Likes bowled another frame.“You got it,” his co-star Jelani Remy called out to him. “You look great.” Likes struck down three pins, then two more. (That frame was also erased.) The Pinheads beat their rivals 1,176 to 943 — though the “Kimberly Akimbo” team was admittedly down a player. A second game began. Likes wouldn’t bowl this one either, he had more circulating to do. He feels that he has spent his whole life getting to a place like this. He is determined to enjoy it.“It’s the reason I’m wearing the bowling shirt,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this community. I’ve been waiting to be able to do what I love and to be around people that I love.” More

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      Musical Adaptation of ‘Almost Famous’ Will Close on Broadway

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      The show, a passion project for Cameron Crowe, opened on Broadway in early November, but has faced soft sales in a competitive market.“Almost Famous,” a stage adaptation of the acclaimed 2000 film about a teenager who travels with a rock band while endeavoring to become a music journalist, will close on Broadway on Jan. 8 after an unsuccessfully short run.The musical, which had one of the season’s biggest budgets and best-known brands, began previews Oct. 3 and opened Nov. 3. The reviews were mostly not good; in The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green wrote that, despite the film’s charms, “the stage musical misses every opportunity to be the sharp, smart entertainment it might have been.”The show’s grosses have been so-so, and insufficient to consistently cover its running costs: during the week that ended Dec. 11, it grossed $765,060, while playing to houses that were only three-quarters full. At the time of its closing “Almost Famous,” which stars Casey Likes, Drew Gehling, Anika Larsen, Solea Pfeiffer and Chris Wood, will have had 30 preview performances and 77 regular performances.The musical is a passion project for Cameron Crowe, who won an Oscar for the film’s screenplay, which was based on his experiences as an adolescent (he also directed the film). Crowe wrote the musical’s book, while Tom Kitt composed the new music, and the two collaborated on the lyrics. The show, directed by Jeremy Herrin, also features a few pre-existing songs, the best known of which is Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”“Almost Famous,” produced by Lia Vollack and Michael Cassel, was capitalized for up to $18 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has not recouped that money; the producers hope that the show will fare better beyond Broadway. (A cast album is to be released March 17, and the producers said in a statement that they anticipate “many productions in communities across the country and world, for years to come.” One probable destination: Australia, where Cassel is one of the biggest commercial producers.)Like Crowe himself, the show spent its formative period in San Diego: It had a pre-Broadway production in 2019 at the Old Globe Theater there. The Los Angeles Times declared it “an unqualified winner.” More

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      Review: In ‘Almost Famous,’ the Heart of Rock ’n’ Roll Flatlines

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      Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film, set in the world of bands and groupies, does not survive its Broadway musical transplant.At its best, rock ’n’ roll is “a form that is gloriously and righteously dumb” — or so decrees Lester Bangs, a character in the new musical “Almost Famous.”Alas, the show, which opened on Broadway on Thursday, gets the wrong part of that formula right. Though celebrating the rock world of 1973, when the real Lester Bangs was the field’s most influential critic, “Almost Famous” is neither glorious nor righteous. It barely even has a form.That leaves dumb, and I’m sorry to say that despite the intelligence of the 2000 movie on which it’s based, and the track record of its creators, the stage musical misses every opportunity to be the sharp, smart entertainment it might have been. In retelling the story of a 15-year-old who gets sucked prematurely into the world of bands and groupies and roadies and drugs, it lands instead in a mystifying muddle, occasionally diverting but never affecting.It needn’t have been that way; the source material is rich. But perhaps because the story is semi-autobiographical, Cameron Crowe, who wrote and directed the movie, apparently saw little reason to rethink it for the stage. The 15-year-old, William Miller (Casey Likes), still sets out, under the tutelage of Bangs (Rob Colletti), to be a rock journalist. When Rolling Stone, thinking he is much older, assigns him to cover a middling band called Stillwater — a composite of several groups Crowe actually toured with — William is torn between Bangs’s warning not to befriend his subjects and his own craving to be cool.But musical theater is a radically different beast from film, let alone life, and Crowe, working with the composer and co-lyricist, Tom Kitt, and the director Jeremy Herrin, does not seem to have accounted for that. The screenplay limited itself to William’s point of view, revealing the other main characters — especially Stillwater’s frontman, Russell Hammond, and his muse, Penny Lane — through the boy’s adoring eyes. William himself was characterized almost entirely by the act of watching, which was sufficient and even necessary to Crowe’s purposes.Solea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane, with Likes’s William. The Broadway show, our critic writes, reduces the story to little more than a love triangle linking William, Penny and Stillwater’s frontman, Russell Hammond.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA musical can’t work that way. If he’s going to sing — and if he’s the protagonist he has to — William must have something worth singing about. But Crowe and Kitt have given him only one real solo, the excellent “No Friends,” which is engaging because it grapples with a real conflict the boy faces. One is not enough, and though Likes, making his Broadway debut at 20, is appealing in the role and delivers when given the chance, there’s a hole at the center of the story that no amount of stage business can disguise.Not that Herrin doesn’t try. “Almost Famous” is one of the busiest book musicals I can recall, the stage so constantly and minutely activated (with choreography by Sarah O’Gleby) that it soon seems as flat and futile as an ant farm. Big moments, like Hammond’s acid-fueled dive from the roof of a house into a swimming pool, barely register; the settings by Derek McLane are resolutely unspectacular. And even in ordinary moments, filled with overdrawn caricatures slamming into one another, it’s often difficult to locate the important information amid all the empty industry.The same underwhelming overload hampers the music, which is obviously a bigger problem for a musical. Of the astounding 30 numbers listed in the program, only seven are what I’d call real theater songs. They are useful in establishing William’s overprotective mother (tartly played by Anika Larsen) and, in “Morocco,” the show’s best tune, Solea Pfeiffer’s dreamy but slippery Penny. “The Night-Time Sky’s Got Nothing on You,” a duet for her and Russell (Chris Wood), sounds, as it should, like an actual love song of the era, but for once with lyrics that trace a theatrical arc.Unfortunately, most of the rest of the songs are fragments, reprises or ensemble numbers so spliced with dialogue and served up in small bits as to nullify their expressive value. Some of them might be quite nice — Kitt’s melodies are never uninteresting — if they could just be sung through.But the show’s biggest musical problem comes from the fact that an unmanageably large proportion of its songs, perhaps a third, are covers. Originally made famous by the likes of the Allman Brothers Band, Deep Purple, Stevie Wonder and Led Zeppelin, these are performed diegetically, in whole or in part, in concert or backstage scenes.The use of covers made sense in the realistic format of the movie, where they add granular texture to William’s love affair with the world he was watching. But in the fundamentally surreal world of a musical, familiar pop tunes are like junk food, providing a ping of stimulation with no nutrition. Ending the first act with the company singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” — staged for our pleasure, not William’s — thus seems like a cheat and a sop.Foreground from left: Likes (kneeling), Brandon Contreras, Chris Wood and Drew Gehling in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA musical is not, ideally, a singalong. Nor is it a tone poem, in which it might be sufficient for songs simply to create a mood and please the ear. (At least the ones here do please the ear; they are for the most part well performed, if rarely with any special charisma.) Even the best of recent jukebox musicals have demonstrated the form’s inherent pitfalls in the process of overcoming them; the worst have demonstrated its bankruptcy. So why did the producers and the creative team of “Almost Famous” fall at least partway into the same traps?I can only conclude that they wanted to hedge their bets on material that as originally conceived seemed commercially dangerous. A quiet, personal look at the way a loud, popular medium inflates and then punctures private dreams may not have seemed very Broadway.And yet that’s exactly what coming to Broadway — a loud, popular medium if ever there was one — has done to “Almost Famous.” The workaround reduces the story to a far more conventional one, little more than a love triangle linking William, Penny and Russell. With no broader implications to give it gravitas, no real investigation of the way the rock revolution altered our concepts of celebrity, it floats away into the jukebox ether.If you believe that Lester Bangs’s precept applies equally to musicals — and it’s true that many fine ones are gloriously and righteously dumb — you might not mind that. But if you care about the form, you may wish “Almost Famous” had aimed (as its Stevie Wonder cover urges) for higher ground.Almost FamousAt the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, Manhattan; almostfamousthemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Almost Famous’ Heads to Broadway, Purple Aura Intact

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      SAN DIEGO — In the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” William Miller, all of 15 and eager to conduct an interview for Creem magazine, can’t manage to slide past the brusque security guard at the arena where Black Sabbath is playing, despite his assurances that he is indeed a journalist. Not on the list, the guard says, then tells him to go to the top of the ramp “with the other girls.”One morning in August, Cameron Crowe — who made the coming-of-age movie, a gentle fictionalization of his days writing for Rolling Stone in the early 1970s — was back at that ramp. “This is where I’d be sent,” he said with a laugh, pointing to the spot where William, his cinematic alter ego, meets Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) and the other Band-Aids, the not-groupies who would help him navigate the backstage world of rock ’n’ roll.“The fact that they befriended me and started showing me the ropes was the beginning of everything,” Crowe, 65, said. “There are so many times where, if one thing didn’t happen, there’s no ‘Almost Famous.’”The film earned him an Academy Award for best original screenplay and went on to become a beloved story about the transformative power of music. So it was perhaps only a matter of time that it would transform yet again into, yes, a musical.Solea Pfeiffer, left, as Penny Lane, and Casey Likes as William Miller in the musical “Almost Famous.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Almost Famous” opens on Broadway next month, three years after its world premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe. Scores of Hollywood films have been made into musicals over the years, but few of the original filmmakers have had their hands in the remaking (Garry Marshall’s “Pretty Woman” and Patricia Resnick’s “9 to 5” are notable exceptions), as Crowe is doing here, writing the book and co-writing the lyrics.Crowe, who has written and directed such movies as “Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Vanilla Sky,” initially was unsure about making a musical out of his critically acclaimed film. “I was really nervous about whether it would translate,” he said. “Because the show’s not a jukebox thing. It’s meant to capture the same thing as the movie, a personal story with music that you love.”Despite his concerns, the musical received rave reviews (the Los Angeles Times called it “as shimmering as a stadium of lighters during a Led Zeppelin encore”). But a planned Broadway debut in 2020 was forced into cold storage by the pandemic. The ensemble stayed in touch over the intervening years via a group chat, however, and nearly all of the original cast is returning for the show’s Broadway run, including Casey Likes as William Miller and Solea Pfeiffer as Penny Lane.“One of the silver linings of this horrible moment that we all went through was that the work just deepened,” Pfeiffer said. “And Cameron’s rewriting stuff all the time. It’s like a living, breathing thing.”Both the show and the original film boast such hits as Joni Mitchell’s “River” and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” The film’s Grammy-winning soundtrack album, already a double LP set, contains only a third of the 50-some songs in the film.According to Lia Vollack, one of the show’s producers and a former president of worldwide music for Sony Pictures Entertainment, none of the bands whose music they sought for the Broadway outing turned them down.Crowe based “Almost Famous” on his days as a young music writer for Creem, Rolling Stone and other rock magazines.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York Times“Cameron and I both used our personal relationships to make things happen,” she said.Back at the arena, Crowe wandered the cavernous backstage area. In one nondescript room, now used to host visiting teams, he remembered interviewing rock royalty, including the members of Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Traffic. “The last time I saw Ronnie Van Zant was in this dressing room,” he said.Despite a youth that many rock fans could only dream of, when Crowe began writing the “Almost Famous” screenplay, he didn’t make it about himself. “I initially wrote a script for David Bowie about a publicist who’s working with this Peter Frampton-type character named Ricky Fedora,” he said. “Penny Lane was there, but I was just a tiny character.”Inspired by semi-autobiographical films by some of his cinematic heroes, including Neil Simon, Barry Levinson and François Truffaut, Crowe let his younger self take center stage. In the Broadway version, Crowe pulls even more from his own life, in particular, the relationship between his mother and sister.He recalled advice from Tom Kitt, the show’s composer, who told him, “The movie is your story, so let’s not adapt the movie when we have all this source material that came before that.”Anika Larsen, who plays William’s mother, Elaine, worried about playing the character brought to life in the movie by Frances McDormand. “The first week was terrifying and awful,” Larsen said. “She’s my favorite actor of all time. I was like, why would I do or say anything different than Frances McDormand?”Kate Hudson played Penny Lane in the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” earning an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.Neal Preston/DreamWorks PicturesUnderstanding the musical theater aspect of her role — where there are no camera close-ups at an actor’s disposal — helped her make peace with it. “Our tasks are so different,” she said. “Frances is telling you volumes with just the slightest look on her face. And I’m singing all of those things in songs.”In the film and the musical, Elaine Miller frets about the potential ill effects the rock world might have on William (“Don’t take drugs,” she famously and embarrassingly yells after dropping him off at the Black Sabbath concert). But Alice Crowe, the director’s mother, who died in 2019 before the musical opened, could not have been prouder of what became of her music-obsessed son. When the show was in rehearsals at the Old Globe, Crowe would call her every night, sometimes expressing doubts about how things were going.“She’d say, It’s going to be great,” he recalled. “Your negative thoughts are actions! You’ll create it! Never give up! You never give up! You love theater! This is the legacy of your family! Tell the story! Tell the story!”In addition to bringing a bit more of Alice Crowe into Elaine Miller, Crowe and his team took a second look at Penny Lane, with an eye to the #MeToo movement. “We wanted to give her more agency,” Crowe said.Much more than just an object of two men’s desires, Penny finds her voice in the show, literally, and sings just as much as the boys in the band. “In the film, it’s so much from William’s point of view,” Pfeiffer said. “In our version, Penny’s more humanized. We see her feet touch the ground.”The show’s producers have also dropped a scene in the film where she may or may not confess to being underage and omitted moments played for comedy when she overdoses.“I don’t think it’s about bringing Penny Lane and the Band-Aids up-to-date,” said Jeremy Herrin, the show’s director. “I think it would be appalling to give characters a vocabulary and a thought process they wouldn’t have had in those days. But we try to be very responsible about how we present it.”Crowe outside the San Diego arena where a key scene from his movie takes place. “There are so many times,” he said, “where, if one thing didn’t happen, there’s no ‘Almost Famous.’”Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesThe creators are also shifting the perspective to more of the characters, largely through song. Kitt recalled writing a song a day for Crowe in the early stages of the show’s creation. “Cameron is a poet,” he said. “These characters want to have new thoughts in the voice of Cameron Crowe. So there are many places where you’ll hear something in the lyrics that came directly out of the film.”The show marks Crowe’s first Broadway musical, and the first time on Broadway for 15 members of the cast, including Likes, who debuted the part of William when he was 17. “I basically grew up on the show,” he said. “I do feel like the kid on this production. And when I don’t, I’m definitely reminded by my cast members.”After his visit to the arena, Crowe stopped by the San Diego apartment he lived in during high school, the place where his sister gave him the stash of LPs — “Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys, “Cheap Thrills” by Big Brother and the Holding Company — that would later shape his musical tastes and, as his sister promised, set him free.While there, Crowe talked about what he had learned about writing musicals. “Be succinct,” he said. “It’s a great lesson for me, because I write really long scripts.” He also discovered the camaraderie and closeness that comes with working on a show for months and even years, as one does in the theater, as opposed to the short days and weeks one spends on a movie shoot.“I love, love, love that you live with the actors,” he said.Crowe is taking full advantage of the opportunity. “Cameron is there every minute of every rehearsal every day,” said Drew Gehling, who plays Jeff Bebe, the driven lead singer of Stillwater, the band William is profiling.As for William, Crowe’s eternally young alter ego, “I’m still that guy,” Crowe said. “I still love doing interviews. I love William and his relationship with his sister, just trying to make it all work in the family.”Not that it’s ever easy seeing his life play out in front of the masses, whether in a movie theater or on a Broadway stage. “It’s emotional,” he said. “When people would come up after the movie and go, ‘It’s too long. I don’t like him in Ohio,’” I’d be like, ‘Is my life too long?’ It’s hard not to take it personally.” More

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      7 New Musicals Are Headed to Broadway This Fall

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      Behind every new New York season are a lot of wannabes, also-rans and hopeless cases to keep track of.I have friends who keep a spreadsheet of every show they’ve seen, cross-indexed to their Playbill collection.I’m the opposite. I toss my Playbills but keep Excel fired up with compulsive catalogs of what’s coming next.Especially for musicals, it’s a highly unreliable list. Some shows have sat on it undisturbed since the 20th century. I don’t think the stage adaptation of “My Man Godfrey,” first announced in 1985 and occasionally re-announced ever since, will ever actually open on Broadway. And was ABBA really going to write a version of “Marty”? No, that must have been a typo — though I’m not sure for what.On the other hand, at least one show I thought would never make it off the list unfortunately did. (Clue: It involved an escape to Margaritaville.) In my “comments” column for dubious entries, I sometimes include useful information like “Whut?”In any case, it’s around this time of year that I traditionally cull and update the herd, getting excited or terrified about what’s headed my way. So far, seven Broadway musicals are in the “definite” column, having been officially announced for the fall.They make an unusual grouping. To begin with, only one, “1776,” is a revival — and that one might as well be new. As reshaped by Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page in the post-“Hamilton” manner, and featuring a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers, the American Independence pageant aims to offer a more inclusive history than our real past did.Also unusual: Among the six new musicals, only “A Beautiful Noise,” based on the life and songs of Neil Diamond, is a biographical jukebox. (Will Swenson, who does swagger very well, stars.) And only two others — a very modest proportion compared to most seasons — are Hollywood adaptations.One of those is “Almost Famous,” based on Cameron Crowe’s 2000 coming-of-age film about a young man swept up in a 1970s rock ’n’ roll dream. It may ensure some authenticity that Crowe has written the book for the show, and, with the composer Tom Kitt, the lyrics.The other Hollywood adaptation is “Some Like It Hot,” based on the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy. If you think you’ve seen it onstage before, you’re partly right; it was first turned into a musical, called “Sugar,” in 1972. That version’s score was by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill; this one’s by their natural inheritors, the “Hairspray” team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.The remaining incoming musicals, though no less exciting, may be even more familiar. (I’ve already seen two of them in earlier productions.) “Kimberly Akimbo,” based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s play about a girl with a premature-aging condition, ran Off Broadway, at the Atlantic Theater Company, last season. “KPOP,” a behind-the-scenes look at the Korean pop music industry, was another Off Broadway hit, in 2017. Both will have big adjustments to make for larger theaters and audiences, and I’m eager to see how they do it.Then there’s “& Juliet,” which has been playing in London (with a pandemic interruption) since 2019, and which is the only show on my spreadsheet to start with a typographical symbol. From a distance, it appears to be a mash-up of several Broadway tropes: updated Shakespeare, romantic fantasy and hit parade. Its songs, by Max Martin, are mostly familiar from recordings by Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys and the like.But the seven sure musicals this fall are only the tip of my Excel iceberg. Slightly below the water line are shows almost certain to announce their arrival quite soon, including the revival of Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’,” the stage adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada” and the London hit “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.”Diving a bit deeper, we get to a larger school of wannabes. Many seem fascinating; “Lempicka,” for one, about the hedonistic Polish painter, has been getting good reviews for its various tryout productions.Others seem stuck in development hell. “Harmony,” the Barry Manilow show about a singing group in Nazi Germany, had its world premiere in 1997; it took 25 years to get as far as the tip of Manhattan, where it had a brief run this spring. At its final performance there, Manilow’s collaborator Bruce Sussman told the audience, “I’d like to think of today as only the end of the beginning!”Everyone does, even the bottom feeders, those mystifying creatures someone apparently once considered a good idea. “Magic Mike”? “The Honeymooners”? The Baby Jessica Falls in the Well musical? The adaptation of “Paradise Lost”? (Only one of those is made up.)But for list-compulsives like me — my spreadsheet includes nearly 100 titles, from “A Little Princess” to “Zanna” — the quality of the product hardly matters. What I like to contemplate is the vast array. Sometimes I envision the titles as a swarm of planes taxiing at airports all over the country: “Bhangin’ It,” “Trading Places,” “Black Orpheus,” “Beaches,” even the “Untitled Roy Rogers Musical.” They haven’t lifted off yet, and some of them are out of fuel, but they’re on the runway, eager noses all pointed in our direction. More

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      ‘Almost Famous,’ Now a Musical, Will Open on Broadway This Fall

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      The stage adaptation, with book and lyrics by Cameron Crowe and music and lyrics by Tom Kitt, will begin previews Sept. 13.“Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe’s rock ’n’ roll coming-of-age story, will make its pandemic-delayed trip to Broadway this fall.A musical adaptation of the beloved 2000 film, the show had an initial run in San Diego in 2019, and its creative team then continued to work on the project while theaters were shut down by the coronavirus pandemic and as Broadway began to rebound.The musical is now scheduled to begin previews on Sept. 13 and to open Oct. 11 at an unspecified Shubert theater. It is the 11th show to announce performance dates for the new Broadway season, and at least two dozen more are circling.“Almost Famous” is Crowe’s semi-autobiographical story, set in 1973, about a teenage music journalist and his relationships with members of the band he is chronicling as well as the young women who follow it. Crowe wrote and directed the film, and won an Oscar for the screenplay; he has written the book and is a co-author of the lyrics for the musical.In an interview, Crowe described himself as “exuberant” about the Broadway transfer, saying, “I’m ready to share it with people.”“Every time I see the play I go back to being 15 years old,” he added.Crowe said he grew up seeing Shakespeare plays at the Old Globe in San Diego, where the musical began its life, and that he has found working in theater more “personal and soulful” than working in the film industry. And, he said, “something about telling a story about loving music draws music-loving people.”The Old Globe production garnered strong reviews, particularly from the critic Charles McNulty of The Los Angeles Times, who called it “an unqualified winner.”The score is mostly original, with music by Tom Kitt (“Next to Normal”) who collaborated on the lyrics with Crowe; the musical also features a number of pop songs, including Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and Joni Mitchell’s “River.”The show is being directed by Jeremy Herrin (“Wolf Hall”) and choreographed by Sarah O’Gleby.The lead producers are Lia Vollack, a former Sony executive who is also the lead producer of “MJ,” the Michael Jackson musical, and the Michael Cassel Group, an Australian production company that has become increasingly active on Broadway. The show is being capitalized for up to $18 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The role of the young journalist, named William Miller, will be played by Casey Likes, who also played the role at the Old Globe in San Diego; this will be his Broadway debut. (“He still looks young,” Crowe promised.)Chris Wood, best known for CW television shows including “Supergirl” and “The Vampire Diaries,” will make his Broadway debut as the band’s lead guitarist, Russell Hammond (played by Billy Crudup in the film). Anika Larsen (“Beautiful”) will take on the role of the protagonist’s mother, Elaine (played by Frances McDormand in the movie), and Solea Pfeiffer (“Hamilton”) will portray Penny Lane, Kate Hudson’s character in the film. The cast will also include Drew Gehling (“Waitress”) as the band’s lead singer, Jeff Bebe. More