The year is 1973 and it's all happening. Led Zeppelin is king, Richard Nixon is President, and idealistic 15-year-old William Miller is an aspiring music journalist. When Rolling Stone magazine hires him to go on the road with an up-and-coming band, William is thrust into the rock-and-roll circus, where his love of music, his longing for friendship, and his integrity as a writer collide. Almost Famous is about a young man finding his place in the world and the indelible characters he meets along the way. It's a celebration of community, family, fandom and the power of music.
Did it need to become a stage musical? Debatable. But one thing the effusive show gets right, like the movie that spawned it, is the infectious energy of rock 'n' roll at a transitional moment - 1973 - when the raw, rebellious spirit of great rock was making way for the slicker, more commercialized sound of mass-consumption superstardom. For many epochal bands and solo artists, that year was an artistic peak they would never again match. That gives Crowe's quasi-memoir, in both incarnations, a bittersweet undertow of simultaneous discovery and loss.
In another devastating blow to the 'West Coast Has Taste' community, the musical Almost Famous has opened on Broadway, after a well-received premiere run in San Diego, to put another nail in that idealistic California coffin. It is a production so dull, with poor direction, ugly sets, uninteresting music, and flat performances, that it really needn't exist at all. Mind you, my beef here is mainly with the Pacific-facing critics who-be it through payola, their overall lack of theatre, or whichever self-help cult they've got going on over there these days-allowed me to raise my expectations for a show which counts among the most artistically lacking I've seen.
2019 | San Diego, CA (Regional) |
The Old Globe Premiere Production San Diego, CA (Regional) |
2022 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Music | Tom Kitt |
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Sound Design of a Musical | Peter Hylenski |
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Wig and Hair | Campbell Young Associates |
2023 | Theatre World Awards | Theatre World Awards | Casey Likes |
2023 | Tony Awards | Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre | Tom Kitt |
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