Rupert Holmes Joins Creative Team For 'ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS' Musical

Tony Award-winner Rupert Holmes has joined the creative team of the new musical, Robin and the 7 Hoods, it was announced today by the show's producers (Dennis Mastro, Bruce Charet, Billy Campbell, Dennis Farina; Barry Brown, executive producer). As previously announced, the swinging ‘60's will meet Broadway when this brand new musical comedy opens in New York during the 2010-11 season. Prior to its Broadway run, the show will premiere on the west coast next summer.

Holmes, who will write the book for Robin and the 7 Hoods, was last represented on Broadway with his book for the Kander and Ebb musical, Curtains (for which he received a Tony Award nomination). Other Broadway writing credits include Say Goodnight, Gracie (Tony Award nomination, Best Play) and the Tony Award-winning Best Musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (for which Mr. Holmes received Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score). In addition, he has written the book for the new musical The First Wives Club which is now playing at The Old Globe in San Diego.

Producer Mastro said, "Rupert Holmes is one of the savviest writers in the business. His understanding of the world of Robin and the 7 Hoods, and his extraordinary wit make Holmes the perfect ‘partner' for Cahn & Van Heusen. We're thrilled he's on board."

Robin and the 7 Hoods will celebrate songs by the iconic Sammy Cahn & James Van Heusen whose body of work is one of the true treasures of the Great American Songbook. Songs such as "My Kind of Town," "Come Fly with Me," "All The Way," "Ain't That a Kick in the Head," and many more will comprise the musical's score.

A re-thinking of the classic 1964 Warner Brothers film of the same name, Robin and the 7 Hoods will shine a Broadway light on that sexy, swinging era, where the old culture meets the sexual revolution.

In addition to a book by Mr. Holmes and a score by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen, Robin and the 7 Hoods will feature musical supervision by John McDaniel, costume design by Tony Award-winner Gregg Barnes, lighting design by Tony Award-winner Natasha Katz, hair and wig design by Josh Marquette, casting by Tara Rubin, and will be directed and choreographed by multi-Tony Award-nominee Casey Nicholaw. Ken Denison/Aruba Productions is General Manager.

Casting and additional Robin and the 7 Hoods news will be announced soon.

Rupert Holmes is a playwright, composer, lyricist, arranger, screenwriter, conductor, novelist and singer-songwriter. To date, he has authored (and composed the music for) five Broadway shows: The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Tony award-winner for Best Musical); the Tony nominated play Say Goodnight Gracie (about the life of George Burns); the Edgar award winning comedy-thriller Accomplice; the tour?de-force for actor Stacy Keach, Solitary Confinement; and, in collaboration with the legendary songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, the recent hit musical Curtains, starring David Hyde Pierce. He has himself won Tony awards as an author, composer and lyricist and received four additional Tony nominations. He has won five New York Drama Desk awards, including Best Orchestration and, for Curtains, the 2007 award for Best Book of a Musical.

His love for both story-telling and music initially found outlet within the framework of story songs, leading him to a career as a pop singer-songwriter of the seventies, when he wrote, arranged, and conducted Barbra Streisand's platinum album Lazy Afternoon and contributed songs to the Golden Globe-winning score A Star is Born as well as arranging for Streisand's Back to Broadway album. His pop tunes have since been recorded by many of the leading vocalists of our time including Britney Spears, Cleo Laine, Barry Manilow, Patti LuPone, Melissa Manchester, Dolly Parton, Rita Coolidge, Dionne Warwick, Judy Collins and opera star Renee Fleming. In 1979 and 1980, he himself topped the Billboard charts as both a singer, songwriter, and arranger with his own iconic hit "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," a number one record in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan, and heard most recently in such movies as Wanted, Shrek, Bewitched, The Sweetest Thing, American Splendor and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. He followed this with several more top ten hits (including the chart-topping ballad by the Jets, "You Got It All Over Him" and his own recordings of "Him" and "The People that You Never Get To Love") and has performed in every kind of venue from The Bottom Line to Carnegie Hall, from The Today Show to The Tonight Show and his own hour-length PBS Soundstage special. In the nineties, he created and wrote AMC's critically-acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning television "dramedy" Remember WENN. With the millennium, his first novel, Where the Truth Lies, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut Crime Novel, nominated for a Nero Wolfe award for Best American Mystery, and made into a film by Atom Egoyan and starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. His second novel Swing reached #24 of all books on Amazon. His short story "Monks of the Abbey Victoria" is part of the prestigious anthology Best American Mystery Stories 2008.

Forthcoming musicals include the books for First Wives Club with Motown legends Holland-Dozier-Holland, Marty with Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, a new stage musical of Secondhand Lions for Warner Brothers, My Man Godfrey with Urinetown's Mark Hollmann. Holmes is also writing the book and lyrics for the musical of The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis and Marvin Hamlisch and his own book and score for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Additionally, he is writing a crime novel for Twelve Publishing (the first entry in his McMasters Guide to Homicide series, entitled Murder Your Employer).

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.