All tagged Summer: The Donna Summer Musical

Jukebox Musicals: Do You Have a Quarter Ready?

In the last decade or so, there has been an ongoing effort to fashion musicals around the songs of a certain singer. musical group or musical period. These are not musical revues that I speak of, but rather book musicals that try to create a story with a through-line hinging on the radio hits that are already familiar to audiences. I may not be in the majority here (or perhaps I am), but I find this the lazy road to creating musical theatre. Yes, there have been occasional hits along the way: Jersey BoysMovin’ OutMamma Mia, and Beautiful come to mind, but, in general, haven’t these jukebox ventures been mostly failures? I often wonder why this trend persists. Is it the off-chance hope of hitting gold like the aforementioned titles?