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.
To that end, the musical scrupulously duplicates the movie, delivering nearly every famous line of dialogue right where you expect it, whether shouted ('Don't take drugs!'), sung ('It's all happening'), or yelled out in the middle of a song ('I am a golden god!'). It so desperately wants to remind you of something else you might've loved that the presiding emotional affect ends up being melancholy. We've missed the tour bus twice over. This is almost Almost Famous.
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.
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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