Brooks Ashmanskas, Alex Brightman, Robyn Hurder and More Will Lead Workshop for Broadway-Bound SMASH

As BroadwayWorld reported last Spring, SMASH is soon heading to Broadway, but first, it will have a six-week workshop featuring an all-star Broadway cast. 

Variety reports that the workshop will be lead by Brooks Ashmanskas, Alex Brightman, Yvette Nicole Brown, Bella Coppola, Nihar Duvvuri, Casey Garvin, Robyn Hurder, Kristine Nielsen, Krysta Rodriguez and Jonalyn Saxer, with Wendi Bergamini, Giovanni Bonaventura, Jim Borstelmann, Zachary Downer, Tiffany Engen, Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Megan Kane, Caleb Marshall-Villarreal, Connor McRory, JJ Niemann, Tanairi Sade Vazquez, Brian Shepard, Sarah Sigman, Jake Trammel and Katie Webber.

The stage musical adaptation, inspired by the fan-favorite NBC series, is slated for Broadway in the 2024-25 season.

Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg will serve as lead producers. The production will be helmed by 5-time Tony-winning director Susan Stroman, with a score by the Tony- and Grammy-winning duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Some Like It Hot, Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns, etc.), who wrote over two dozen songs for the television show, many of which will be used in the musical. They will also be writing additional new material. The book will be co-written by two of Broadway's most seasoned craftsmen, Tony-nominated Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Peter and the Starcatcher) and Tony-winner Bob Martin (The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone). And Smash's Emmy- winning choreographer, Joshua Bergasse, will reprise his role for the stage adaptation. 101 Productions, Ltd. will serve as General Management.

Many of the songs Shaiman and Wittman wrote for the television show -including the Emmy- nominated "Let Me Be Your Star" - will be used in the new musical. And while the story will follow the harrowing and hilarious process of mounting "Bombshell" (the musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe), the stage version of Smash will also depart liberally from the series.

Smash was groundbreaking in its ambitiousness and developed a devoted following, but its popularity has only grown in the following years. The cast performed a charity benefit concert of the songs from "Bombshell" at the Minskoff Theatre in June of 2015 which sold out in fifteen minutes. It was filmed and eventually streamed during the early days of the pandemic in 2019 as a benefit for The Actor's Fund (Entertainment Community Fund).

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