Interview: Theatre Life with Joe Iconis And Charlie Rosen

The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical is a “gonzo” terrific new musical currently running at Signature Theatre through July 13th. Today’s subjects are two of the reasons the show is so successful.

Composer and co-Book Writer Joe Iconis is probably best known to musical theatre types as the composer of Be More Chill, but his career goes far beyond that show. His other works for the stage include Broadway Bounty Hunter, Bloodsong of Love, Love in Hate Nation, and The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks.

His songs have also been heard in season 2 of NBC’s Smash and Riverdale.

He is the recipient of the Edward Kleban Award, Jonathan Larson Award, and the Richard Rodgers Award.

Joe is Artist in Residence at 54 Below in NYC and frequently performs his concert act there and also at the Laurie Beechman Theatre.

Orchestrator Charlie Rosen is the youngest person to ever win the Tony Award for Best Orchestrations. He did with for his work on Moulin Rouge along with Matt Stine and Katie Kresek. His then won a second Tony Award with Bryan Carter for Some Like it Hot. His work was most recently heard in DC with Round House Theatre’s production of A Hannukah Carol.

Other Broadway credits include Be More Chill, Tommy, Honeymoon in Vegas, All In and A Strange Loop which premiered here in DC at Woolly Mammoth.

In London Charlie orchestrated the most recent revival of Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theater.

He plays pretty much every instrument invented with the exception of low reeds. Give him time though, he’s only 34.

The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical is a musical that everyone needs to see for many reasons. Joe Iconis’ score is one of the best written for modern day musical theatre.

Charlie Rosen’s orchestrations, with only five players mind you, makes the score sound considerably bigger. Read on for a something that is very surprising in modern day orchestration. Trust me, it’s a welcome change.

The cast and direction by Christopher Ashley is of the highest caliber as are all of the production elements.

Please grab your tickets to The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical at Signature Theatre and be a part of this relevant, quirky, and brilliant new musical.

Joe Iconis and Charlie Rosen are living their theatre lives to the MAX and that is a very good thing to be sure.

How did you get interested in music?

Joe- I didn’t really come from a musical family, so my interest in music really grew over time. I was forced to take piano lessons when I was eight because my parents had a Sohmer piano (which was used as a piece of furniture since the 1960s) and they thought somebody ought to play it. They almost pulled me out of lessons early on because I was floundering a bit, but then my love of musical theater took over and I started playing tunes I was hearing in musicals by ear on the piano. That broke something open in me, and I began arranging my own medleys of songs and, eventually, making up my own tunes. I turned into a very gifted little piano player, and no one knew what the hell to do with me.

Even though I baffled everyone, my family was incredibly supportive. Particularly my grandparents and my aunts. My Grandpa Joe used to drive me from Long Island to Colony Music at least once a month so I could get my fix of impossible-to-find scores and import cast albums. My aunts Ro and Sherry took to me “adult” theater from a very young age. I saw the original production of Falsettos at eleven, and Kiss of the Spider Woman at twelve. 

Charlie- To be honest it’s a hard question to answer because I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t already interested in music. I come from a very musical household, my parents are both musicians, and so basically from birth I was being exposed to all things musical and instrumental, starting piano lessons at age 3 and then taking it from there.

Where did you receive your training?

Joe- I went to NYU Undergrad (Steinhardt.) I was a music composition major. I knew that I wanted to write musicals, and the program was much more geared toward classical and film scoring. My private composition teacher, Steve Rosenhaus, really taught me the nuts and bolts of theater writing. I went to the NYU-Tisch musical theater writing Graduate program and that’s where I found my voice as a writer and kind of came into my own. Not only as a writer but as a human.

Charlie- I had a myriad of teachers over the years on a wide array of instruments as a kid from piano, to flute, to cello, to drums, guitar, bass.. you name it, but my higher educational training came in the form of on and off attendance at Berklee in Boston between the years of 2009 and 2012, squeezing in semesters between Broadway shows I was working on after moving to NYC at age 17 in 2008 to play in the pit of 13 The Musical.

What was your first professional job in the performing arts?

Joe- I was an intern for a nonprofit theater company called the Genesius Guild. I was a terrible intern. I wasn’t organized, I was shy, and I couldn’t be trusted with office work. I only interned because I thought it could get me closer to musical directing readings (which I thought was something I wanted to do at the time).

Charlie- As I ended the last question with my first professional theater gig was when I was a sophomore in high school, playing a developmental workshop of 13 the Musical in LA and then ultimately moving to New York City to play the Broadway production.

Joe- Where did the idea for The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical come from?

Alcohol.

How do you best describe the score of the show and how was the instrumentation decided?

Joe- The score lives in the world of 1960s & 70s rock, but I knew I didn’t want the music to sound like pastiche. Our instrumentation is very much the same sort of instrumentation that would’ve been used had our show been done off-Broadway in 1971, but the way we’re using the instruments and the actual material the instruments are playing is different. The effect is one that feels both of a bygone era and of the moment. My hope is that the orchestration and the score as a whole will feel evocative of a time but, ultimately, timeless.

In writing the score, I was very inspired by the sonic and melodic worlds of The Rolling Stones, Donovan, Melanie, the Hold Steady, The Riverbottom Nightmare Band, Beck, the White Stripes, Shel Silverstein, Harry Nilsson, Jonathan Larson, and the score of Pippin.

Charlie- The score is all things classic rock. The sound of the show is the heart of American Rock and Roll and its intersection with counterculture of the mid-century. Because of this we made the decision to do something highly unusual in today’s current orchestrational landscape. These days Broadway pits and orchestrations are always supplemented with the use of various computer technologies to enhance their sounds. Keyboard books in shows almost always contain synthesizers using software to trigger an incredibly wide array of computer-generated sounds imitating any instrument the mind can imagine from actual pianos, vintage keyboards, strings, brass, harps, percussion, the possibilities are endless. Furthermore, many pits these days make use of the playing back of pre-recorded musical material from software keeping the musicians on click to enhance the size of the pit with pre-recorded audio.

In order to keep the sound of this show feeling like an authentic honest-to-god Rock band, we decided to go against the current grain and use ZERO computers, synthesizers, click track, or music software. What this means is that all of the vintage period keyboard sounds in the show which are usually generated with computer versions had to be generated by the actual instruments invented at the time. This includes many instruments built in the mid-century including an actual Hammond B3, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer electric piano, harmonium, and Mellotron. The authentic analogue versions of these instruments have a warmth and a depth of sound that is rarely imitated by their computer-generated counterparts.

Joe- From the initial idea to first performance at La Jolla, how long was the process of writing The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical?

I had the idea to write the musical in 2006; I was commissioned to write it in 2009. I wrote the first song for the show (the opening number) in 2012. Our first reading of the whole thing was in 2014. I did a full rehaul of the entire musical (basically starting from scratch) in April of 2020. We did a workshop (the first time the show was ever on its feet) at La Jolla in 2022. World premiere in 2023. You do the math. My brain is tired from writing musicals.

Charlie- I think you are the youngest orchestrator to ever win a Tony Award for Best Orchestrations with Moulin Rouge. Can you please talk about the experience of working on that show and how it felt to win the Tony?

You know I suspected that was probably true at the time, but I am not meticulous enough to fact check it myself so I’m glad you can confirm that for me. I feel like in terms of what it felt like to win a Tony, there’s nothing really more I can add to what probably at this point feels like potentially a laundry list of awards show cliches, but it is truly a huge honor to be recognized by a community of your peers in this industry for work that you feel truly proud of, and Moulin Rouge and Some Like it Hot are no exception! It’s an incredibly validating feeling after years of training and honing ones craft to be recognized in this way. I can’t overstate that.

Joe- Charlie lies about his age. He’s secretly 92-years old. He was the ghost orchestrator of the original productions of Call Me Madam and High Button Shoes.

Joe- Your musical Be More Chill started its life off- Broadway before it’s Broadway turn. What would you say were the biggest changes between the two productions and were there any lessons you learned from the experience overall?

It started its life at the gorgeous Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey in 2015. The show was dead on arrival and then its cast album went viral and that lead to off-Broadway in 2018 and Broadway in 2019. There were many changes from the first version in 2015 to what ended up on Broadway (and the West End.) Musicals are never finished. Development just pauses from time to time. I learned many lessons from the experience, all of which can be found in my forthcoming book: All Of The Lessons I Learned From My Be More Chill Experience.

Charlie- I imagine every orchestrator has a role model. If you had the opportunity to meet an orchestrator from the golden age of Broadway, who would it be? 

This is a tough one! There are so many great orchestrators from the history of music that both crossed into the world of Broadway and also stayed mostly in the LA world of film/TV that I love, and that’s not even counting the ones who primarily stayed more in the lane of Jazz/Big Band/Studio orchestra land. But if I had to choose from the list of orchestrators from years past who contributed to Broadway… and had to choose just one… maybe Conrad Salinger who would begin his career on Broadway and eventually go on to be one of the principal orchestrators of all things MGM movie musical? Or maybe Ralph Burns because how can you argue with Funny Girl?? I dunno! Man, that’s a tough one because then what about Red Ginzler or Sid Ramin or Don Walker?? Tough question. 

What projects do you have coming up for the rest of 2025 and into 2026?

Joe- I’m doing a run of Iconis & Family shows at 54 Below in August. Come see me. Say hey.

Charlie- I have a lot of new musicals that are currently in development that I am either arranging, music supervising, or orchestrating that I probably am not at liberty to discuss due to their new-ness, but also my personal side project “The 8-Bit Big Band” which is a 35 piece Jazz orchestra dedicated to performing my arrangements of classic tunes from video games is going on tour, so that will be fun!!

With the gracious permissions of Joe Iconis and Charlie Rosen, here is your chance to hear the demo and and a piece of the final version of Kaboom from The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical. 

Special thanks to Signature Theatre's Publicist and Marketing Manager Zachary Flick for his assistance in coordinating this interview.

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