Do you think a Bye Bye Bride revival set in the modern age would work?

[Oldies m]

The satire and themes are still relevant, and you could make it a statement on who teens never really change.

Tern Conrad Bridie into a You Tube/musicaliy star, update the rock songs to rap or pop songs and make the Ed Sulvlain song about Steven Colbert or Jame Cordon. The only problem I see you facing is Why Conrad needs to go into the army.

Do you think that would work?

[GeorgeandDot]

No.

[Sondheimite]

Tina Fey worked on a script for a decade that modernized Bye Bye Birdie to be about a rapper.

Didn't work then, won't work now. Write a new musical satire, lord knows we need good new work!

[uncageg]

Bye Bye Bride?

[Sondheimite]

uncageg said: "Bye Bye Bride?"

[Dollypop]

The Roundabout revival turned Comrade Birdie into a Jonas Brother and it didn't work. Then again, very little in that production actually worked.

[BwayLB]

I think it depends on what Harvey Fieratein had planned for the NBC TV broadcast before it was canceled.

[SomethingPeculiar]

No. It was a modern show when it premiered, and it's a delightful, innocent period piece now that would fall apart in any other era. It would be like trying to set The Music Man in modern America. We saw what happened with that awful Annie remake.

"The Telephone Hour" would just be kids sitting on a silent stage texting each other!

[Dollypop]

Now that concept of "The Telephone Hour" would make a great parody!

[natashalost]

BwayLB said: "I think it depends on what Harvey Fierstein had planned for the NBC TV broadcast before it was canceled."

Sorry if I'm late on this but did they actually cancel it? I thought they just pushed it back again.

[BwayLB]

I’m just guessing in case NBC does not do it after all.

[CallMeAl2]

SomethingPeculiar said: ""The Telephone Hour" would just be kids sitting on a silent stage texting each other!"

That's actually not bad - you could do it with screens a la Evan Hansen. That's the modern visual equivalent. 

However, while there will always be pop stars, there is no real contemporary parallel to the Army because there is no draft that would force a young man in. Maybe the pop star is a Mormon Justin Bieber type teen and he has to go on his two year mission and drop out of show biz?

The next issue is the Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan was a Sunday Evening institution. Nothing on broadcast TV has that kind of power anymore. The closest you could get to that kind of coast to coast live event today is the Super Bowl.

[dramamama611]

Lol....I've stopped by this thread a few times and am just now noticing the typo in the subject line!

Far too much would have to change, you wouldn't be able to recognize the source material.

[Tom5]

Not adaptable. Probably best to just do it as a retro goof like How To Succeed with Daniel Radcliffe a few years ago.

[MrsSallyAdams]

"how teens never really change."

That's actually one of my issues with the show. The teens in Bye, Bye Birdie are lovable kids who think they're worldly. Kim originally sang about becoming a woman while wearing a baggy sweater and a baseball cap. Her friends worship Birdie un-ironically and ignore the rumors about his bad behavior.

The way teens interact with each other, and with celebrities, is very different today. If the goal would be to show the innocence under their woke, ironic, social media savvy you'd need to rewrite the score as well as the book. Today Be More Chill tries to capture some of that innocence in the leads, while Mean Girls and Dear Evan Hansen revel in the darker, angstier sides of being a teen.

[BroadwayRox3588]

SomethingPeculiar said: "The Telephone Hour" would just be kids sitting on a silent stage texting each other!"

Too bad they can't re-name it "The Smartphone Hour." (since another show already has that lol)

#RichSetaFire #RichIsFlecked

(If I ever shoehorn in that extra of a Be More Chill reference again, feel free me stone me on the spot)

[Jeffrey Karasarides]

natashalost said: "BwayLB said: "I think it depends on what Harvey Fierstein had planned for the NBC TV broadcast before it was canceled."

Sorry if I'm late on this but did they actually cancel it? I thought they just pushed it back again."

Last I heard, it wasn't actually cancelled, it was only put on hold again. Though if it never comes to fruition on NBC, I wonder if some stage production could utilize the updates Harvey Fierstein made to the plot.

[smallvillefan16]

There's a script out there for [a modernized?] film version that was to star Lindsay Lohan and directed by Adam Shankman but it was never made.

[darquegk]

There's also a story (maybe apocryphal) that Tina Fey was working on a modernized remake in which rapper Birdie was going to do public service to renovate his loose-cannon reputation, leading to him staying with a white-bread WASP family. Albert Peterson was going to be reconceived as a woman played by Tina Fey.

According to the story, Strouse and Adams and their respective legal reps got cold feet about how loose the adaptation had become, so Tina Fey wrapped Birdie and Alberta into "30 Rock," and the absurd WASPy fish-out-of-water elements into "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt."

[BwayLB]

Jeffrey Karasarides said: "natashalost said: "BwayLB said: "I think it depends on what Harvey Fierstein had planned for the NBC TV broadcast before it was canceled."

Sorry if I'm late on this but did they actually cancel it? I thought they just pushed it back again."

Last I heard, it wasn't actually cancelled, it was only put on hold again. Though if it never comes to fruition on NBC, I wonder if some stage production could utilize the updates Harvey Fierstein made to the plot."

Well just have to wait and see