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Schmegadoon. I forgot the words, but I know the tune. Oh my God. Hey. To all of you musical theater lovers and everyone else who just got lost on the Internet, today we welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre, as I presume, are all of you. Because today we are going to be talking about the very exciting recent news that Schmigadoon, the sadly cancelled TV show parodying the world of golden age musical theatre, is making its way to an actual Broadway stage as a live musical adaptation. This show already played regionally in the US where I didn't get a chance to see it, but now it seems like I finally will. And so will many of you because it is heading to Broadway this season. But with so much conversation happening right now about the financial uncertainties and challenges of the Broadway landscape, and with recent musical theatre TV show to stage adaptations having not exactly been, shall we say, a smash, the question becomes, is Brigadoon actually going to be a hit? Is it going to be this huge long running Broadway success? Does it have the capacity to. Is it original enough? Does it have the audience? What theatre is it going to? Does that make a difference? Spoiler alert. Yes. Yes it does. And more to the point, is that actually what it's aiming for? We will talk more about Schmigadoon's potential theatrical aspirations in this full theatre news recap. Have I already called it Brigadoon? Have I made that mistake already? At some point in this conversation I will say Brigadoon when I mean Schmigadoon. That is sadly a Schminevitability. But we will do our best. Now these of course are just my opinions and insights about Schmigadoon's Broadway transfer. I would love to hear yours. What do you think? Who's getting tickets? Do we feel feel good about this? Are we excited? Who do we think is going to be in the cast reprising their roles from the world premiere production? Share all of your thoughts and feelings and guesses in the comments section down below. And if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel or go follow me on podcast platforms or other social media apps. I talk about theatre constantly. It's literally all I know how to do. Actually, God help you if you encounter me in the real world and you want to have a conversation about literally anything else. But honestly, why would we? Especially when there is so much to discuss. Let us embark together on this conversation about the Broadway production of Schmigadoon. So let me give you the details about this Broadway production up top. First and foremost, I will let you know I am very excited, but we will get to my feelings about it and my expectations of this production a little bit later. I've just typed Schmogadoon into my emails. What's that? I don't know what that is. So here is the headline news Schmigadoon Exclamation point I have missed musicals with an exclamation point. They're a fun breed musical to open on Broadway this spring, this very season, in a season that otherwise was lacking a little bit of excitement and whimsy and charm among its new musicals. Shall I say, I'm very much eagerly looking forward to the Lost Boys. I have heard great things about that and a couple of other new shows coming in. But in terms of the new musicals, I feel like we weren't yet stacking up to last season and currently we honestly still aren't. But perhaps Schmigadoon will go some of the way towards changing that. So, adapted from the Apple TV plus series of the same name, the musical comedy premiered at the Kennedy center in D.C. the venue for formally respected as the Kennedy center, and will now come to the Nederlander Theatre, which I will tell you is something of a choice. But we will get to that. I already have seven opinions about the sentence that I just read, so the show is opening fairly late in the season. It's beginning performances on April 4th ahead of an April 20th opening night. That's not necessarily because there is already a tenant at the Nederlander Theatre. So that's just when it's all set to happen. I Don't know if that's because of creative team or cast availability, but perhaps the most pivotal question you're asking, especially especially after Smash last season, sort of more loosely adapted to the TV show, is what part of Schmigadoon is this going to be? Is this season one or season two? Or is it both? Well, this is just an adaptation of the first season, the Schmigadoon part, which sort of tells its own self contained Golden Age parody story. And as exciting and sort of into the woods esque as it would be to try and contain that within the first act and then do Schmicago in the second. And as much as that might be what I prefer, I dare say that the narrative pace of the whole thing would probably proved too much of a challenge and would be a little bit more of an inside joke for people who already knew the TV show versus fans who don't and are going to see it on stage for the first time. But I'm already getting ahead of myself. So like I said, adapted from season one of Paul and Ken Dario's same named Apple TV series, Schmigadoon follows a pair of troubled spouses who get lost while hiking and end up inside Schmigadoon, the magical fantastical town of Schmigadoon, a town which is a Golden Age musical come to life. With obviously many parallels to be recognized there. The plot of the Golden Age musical Brigadoon, which, fun fact, I only recently saw for the first time at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Beautiful production here in London. You can go and check out my review wherever you are seeing or hearing this if you would like to, but it was something of a novel experience. I suppose meeting those two the wrong way around knowing Schmigadoon before I knew Brigadoon. And while obviously it makes the most sense for Schmigadoon to be going to Broadway, this community where people are going to get these references and which is, you know, the true home of Golden Age musical theater, a part of me does wish that Schmigadoon had found a way to come to London this summer as a piece of witty counter programming. Because few things in my opinion would go harder than a Brigadoon Schmigadoon 2 show day. That's fun to say by itself. Brigadoon Schmigadoon 2 Show Day. Brigadoon, Schmigadoon 2 Show day. You can tell I experience a lot of nightlife. I know. Anyway, let's carry on. The couple discover that the only way to escape the town and its always singing residents is to embrace their quirky world and perhaps change it for the better along the way. Tony Award winner Christopher Catelli directs and choreographs Schmigadoon, which is written by EMM winner and Grammy nominee Cinco Paul, who penned the songs for the TV series, did the iconic work of creating all of these different musical theater parodies because that is what Schmigadoon is. It is a town that is reminiscent of the world of musical theatre. Its songs are, its plots are, and its characters are. We have parodies in place for Billy Bigelow from Carousel. There's a sort of an Ado Annie from Oklahoma esque character, there's a whole Sound of Music subplot, there's a music man nod. And perhaps the biggest part of the TV show's brilliance was this collection of of exceptionally clever and witty songs written by Cinco Paul. And it's going to be very exciting to get to experience them once more on stage. Now, Christopher Catelli may be known to you as the choreographer of Newsies, but recently he has also been the very celebrated choreographer and director of the big hit Death Becomes her, which is equal parts satisfying and campy and dramatic and fun and flamboyant. Everything that Schmigadoon wants to be. He has already directed and choreographed this production for its world premiere, and his relations with the property actually predates that because he also choreographed it for television. So it's a similar kind of a creative journey that Joshua Bagasse had with Smash last season because he was the choreographer of that for NBC and then ended up choreographing the Broadway show also. Now, casting has yet to be confirmed for the Broadway production of Schmigadoon at the Nederlander Theatre, but I can tell you who appeared in the Kennedy center version in January 2025, a version I almost made the journey to go and see but didn't quite in the hopes that I would one day get to elsewhere. And I'm glad I made that choice. That cast include Tony nominee Alex Brightman, of course, best known for playing the role of Beetlejuice as Josh Skinner with Sarah Chase, most recently seen in the Great Gatsby as his wife Melissa. They are the ordinary, slightly tense couple who find themselves in the mystical world of Brigadoon. Schmigadoon. Gosh darn it, I told you that would happen. The brilliant and hilarious Anne Harada reprised her role from the TV series and was newly joined by the likes of Kevin Delaguila and Isabella McCalla and Makenzie, Lindsay Kurtz, Javier Munoz, Brad Oscar, Ryan Vasquez, my beloved Emily Skinner. Fantastic group of performers. Now, as I mentioned, I didn't get to see the world premiere production at the Kennedy center, but I had many friends who did, who, from what I recall, said that it was just a very close adaptation of the first season of the TV show. It's not like a Smash situation where it's been wildly extrapolated and reworked. This is quite faithfully taking Schmigadoon and putting it on stage. There's also considerably less time that has passed in between Schmigadoon just hitting TV screens and now coming to an IRL stage. So that makes a lot of sense. But there is plenty more for us to discuss here, including whether or not I think the show is going to be a big success and why and what its aspirations might be beyond Broadway. Before you can say corn pudding, let's talk about that now in terms of its Broadway life expectancy, I think there are pros and cons here for Schmigadoon. I can't help root for this show. I was incredibly fond of the TV show, but there are also realities about it that do make me a little bit nervous. Not just because Broadway is currently such a financially bleak landscape, especially for new musicals. There are some huge hits from the past couple of years like the Outsiders and Death Becomes her that still haven't recouped in spite of consistently pretty great ticket sales, but also because if we're going to be completely honest with ourselves, what is Schmigadoon? Well, this is an adaptation of a niche musical theater TV series that did not cross over into mainstream cultural conversation while it was airing, which was cancelled after its second season and which is now being put on Broadway with the expectation that it's going to have a larger audience than it ever really historically has. Where have we seen that recently? Well, we saw it with Smash. The big difference here might be that Schmigadoon is a much more faithful adaptation of that TV series and hopefully just a better show in general. But both shows were sort of going after the same thing and with the same limited initial audience because even though they might be very beloved within our community outside of the Broadway bubble, does anyone really know what Schmigadoon was? Arguably it has something of a better title than Smash does. That already tells you a little bit more about what the show is going to be and a little bit about its comedic tone, but unfortunately that particular title is going to be harder to see from Times Square because. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but there is something to it, believe me. The show is all the way down at the Nederland Theater. And this sounds ridiculous because all of these Broadway theatres are practically very close together. It is a small neighborhood, all things considered. And yet anecdotally it is sort of understood that it can be more of a struggle to sell shows at the Nederlander. You're not getting the same kind of tourist footfall. It's not in such proximity to all of the other Broadway houses, like if it was on 44th or 45th. And so while it being in more recent memory and while it being a closer adaptation to the original source material might give it a leg up on Smash, I worry if the theater that it's in kind of undoes that a little bit. I that it doesn't, but that's my concern. I think we'll see very similar casting in terms of a lot of beloved Broadway stars, just like the D.C. regional premiere. And once again the biggest selling point is going to be the songs is going to be the score. And how fantastic that is though again, is it also not going to be Tony eligible for Cinco Paul? That would be a real shame if that is the case. But Smash wasn't Tony eligible based on originality. I don't know if Schmigadoon being slightly more recent changes that at all. Here is one more aspect of this that I've been considering and you may notice though of you watching me right now that I'm wearing a lot of Spamalot merchandise. The thing is is that Schmigadoon is overtly doing Broadway golden age musical theater parody and that is funny and that is charming and the New York theater community in midtown Manhattan is certainly going to eat that up. But it's also not necessarily something that is brand new. I mean, Forbidden Broadway has been parodying and poking fun at Broadway musicals and satirizing all of these shows and characters and songs for years now. They became an institution and not recently struggled to perpetrate a Broadway and then subsequently off Broadway comeback. The planned Broadway production fell through and the Off Broadway run faltered. Then you also have the fact that since the new millennium, more and more new musicals have been parodying and poking fun at each other. Look at a show like Spamalot, like Shrek the Musical. There are plenty of shows that contain within them Easter eggs and nods and full out parodies of other songs in older productions productions. And while Schmigadoon felt like more of an original concept for doing that on screen. I wonder if doing that on Broadway is going to feel a little bit less novel. It's also, dramaturgically speaking, perhaps a little easier to convey the lunacy of a town of people breaking into song and dance in the context of a TV show. But on a Broadway stage, Josh and Melissa are going to seem like the crazy ones for walking onto what is quite clearly a Broadway musical set like, without having seen it yet. I feel like it reframes the whole thing to a certain perspective, because they can't very well stand there and be like, why are you all acting like we're in a musical when there's an audience feet away? That being said, I really do hope that the show is met with huge, sold out, enthusiastic audiences filling the Nederlander Theatre with uproarious laughter and applause. And the show has made one very good and very interesting decision about their Broadway run. Now they are opening very late in the season and will be one of the last shows before the end of Tony Awards eligibility and before the nominations come out. And hopefully that will be to their benefit. Last season we saw some shows almost opening too late, but that is always a relative concept, depending on the success of other shows that have come before. Something that Schmigadoon's doing, which is incredibly interesting, is running only through September 6th. This is a limited engagement that is going to play through the summer. And just as tourism and audiences begins to decline, they're gonna close. That is the end of this limited engagement, which means in such a short time period, it's almost guaranteed that the production is not going to recoup its initial investment. However, get ready to be a little bit surprised when I tell you that that is pres. Probably not what they're going for on Broadway. No. This doesn't feel like a show that is aiming to make all of its money back during its Broadway run. And I think that's smart. But one that is going to run on Broadway and subsequently be licensed and market its brand globally so that the show can then be done by amateur groups around the country, by regional theaters around the country, and by schools. Schmigadoon is so perfect for community theater. For regional production, Schmigadoon at Papermill Playhouse. I can see that. Schmigadoon done by your local community theater in your high school. Schmigadoon at the Jimmy Awards. All of these things feel like inevitabilities. This makes so much sense for this show. Probably more sense than Broadway, but going to Broadway first is the necessary stepping stone in order to achieve all of that. Remember when Newsies was first produced at Paper Mill Playhouse? This at the time it was said, was only actually happening so that a fully written version of the show could then be licensed to high schools. And so Schmigadoon as a property will go on to recoup its initial investment. But I think that is going to happen beyond its Broadway lifetime. There could even be a national tour around the country. I think touring audiences would go and see a Schmigadoon. It's easy enough to market to those people to subscribers, because if you like Broadway and you like musicals, here is a Broadway musical about Broadway musicals with songs you recognize enough to be charmed by, but not enough to sing along to and bother the people sat behind you. That matters. So while I could tell you all of the reasons why I have a little bit of anxiety about Schmigadoon's Broadway life, I think the reality of the situation is that their aspirations actually go beyond Broadway and that Schmigadoon is playing the long game, as they should, as all shows should be looking to at this point. And you know what? I celebrate that. I think it's a great idea. I also think it challenges somewhat the mindset of determining a musical's value as a hit or a flop based only on its initial Broadway run. When you have shows like the Addams Family, which was not a triumphant Broadway success, but which has gone on to be one of the most produced musicals globally, the lifespan of a musical far exceeds its original Broadway production. Just ask me. We roll along. That being said, I do hope that Schmigadoon has a wonderful reception on Broadway and I hope that I get the chance to see it as well. I'm gonna make sure that I get the chance to see it. I am not about to miss out on corn pudding for a second time. Who do you think I am? And if you want to make sure you hear what I think when I do get the chance to see it, you're gonna need to be subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel. If you don't want to miss any of my upcoming videos, then turn on the notification button somewhere below my face. Or if you just want to listen to me talk about musical theater, which is entirely valid, go and follow me on podcast. The meantime, I would love to know what you all think about Schmigadoon heading to Broadway. Who is going to get tickets when they go on sale? Who is excited for this show? Is there any aspect of this that you don't think I have considered or talked about. Share all of your thoughts in the comments section down below. Oh my God. Hey, it's Mickey Jo from the future. I'm editing this right now, but I forgot about one of the most important parts of this conversation, which is if Schmigadoon goes on to be a stage success, is that going to rekindle the possibility that that we're gonna finally see the season three of the show, which was written but was never actually greenlit, which we never got to see because it had been cancelled, but which was going to cover the likes of the Phantom of the Opera and Into the Woods. We were going to get into all of the 80s mega musical territory, which is probably my favorite era of musical theater. And I am to this day devastated that we didn't get the Les Mis into the woodsy goodness of that time. Also, like, Sideshow was rumored to be a of part of that as well. So in fact, I no longer want Schmigadoon to be a Broadway success. I need Schmigadoon to be such a huge Broadway success that it makes people really excited about the TV show and the second season. And it means that we finally get season three. Thank you so much. Everyone buy tickets because I need this personally. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this exciting Broadway musical theatre update. Stay tuned for more stage news from around the world with me, Mickey Jo Theatre. And I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stage stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.