Brown's Musical 13 to Move to Broadway Next Season

Next season, Spring Awakening won't be the only Broadway musical with an all-adolescent cast.  13, written by Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish, will be brought to a Broadway stage by producer Bob Boyett, reports Bloomberg.com.

Boyett, who expects the show to be capitalized at $8 million to $10 million, said, "I'm very excited.  It's one of the freshest and most fun shows to come along. It's a coming-of-age story that everyone can relate to." No specific production dates, theater, casting or creative information has been announced.

13, with music and lyrics by Brown (Parade, Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years) and a book by Elish, opened to generally strong reviews in Los Angeles at the Center Theatre Group's Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles on January 7th, 2007 and ran through February 18th.  Featuring an onstage teen band and a cast of thirteen young performers, the show, according to the article, "concerns a 13-year-old who moves from New York to Indiana weeks before his bar mitzvah. His mission is to get the cool kids in school to come to the ceremony."

Brown, who notably counts a large constituency of young people among his varied fanbase, won a Tony Award for his score to Parade.  That musical will receive its London premiere at the Donmar Warehouse later this year.  Boyett also stated that Brown's next musical, based on the 1992 Honeymoon in Vegas and co-written with the film's screenwriter Andrew Bergman, will be performed in a July reading.  Honeymoon in Vegas is also aimed for a Broadway run.

Photo - Jason Robert Brown