The Broadway-bound adaptation of TV's Smash will hold a six-week workshop in NYC ahead of a planned Broadway bow in the 2024-2025 season. The news was exclusively reported by Variety and confirmed by Playbill.
The workshop follows an industry reading late last year, though the cast has changed somewhat since then. Variety is reporting that the workshop cast will include Brooks Ashmanskas, Alex Brightman, Robyn Hurder, and Krysta Rodriguez from the earlier reading, newly joined by Yvette Nicole Brown (Community), Bella Coppola (SIX), Nihar Duvvuri, Casey Garvin (Some Like It Hot), Kristine Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), and Jonalyn Saxer (Back to the Future). Susan Stroman (New York, New York) is directing.
The workshop will contain some staging and choreography, and an orchestra.
The plot of the upcoming musical reportedly differs from the TV series, though it will still track the development of a fictional Marilyn Monroe bio-musical. The book is being written by Bob Martin (The Prom) and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), with Some Like It Hot's Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman back writing the score after composing songs for the series.
As reported in 2022, the theatre-centric series' long journey to the stage has shifted from a fully realized production of the series' fictional Marilyn Monroe bio-musical Bombshell (which did play a one-night-only benefit concert in 2015) to a musical adaptation of the NBC series. Many of the TV show's songs join new tunes by Shaiman and Wittman. It's unclear if "Let's Be Bad," written for Smash but recently interpolated into the Broadway score of the Some Like It Hot musical, will be included—though the duo left room for that possibility speaking to Playbill about it in 2022.
The show, which aired on NBC for two seasons beginning in 2012, followed writers Julia and Tom, loosely modeled on Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, creating a fictitious musical about screen icon Marilyn Monroe, with the first season following the fight for the lead between newcomer Karen Cartwright and seasoned chorus girl Ivy Lynn. The stage musical will follow the process of mounting Bombshell, but will otherwise "depart liberally from the series," according to press notes.
Smash is being produced by Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg, all of whom worked on the Theresa Rebeck-created series, as well.
"Smash is near and dear to my heart, and it was always my hope that a musical inspired by the show would eventually come to the stage," says Spielberg in a previous statement. "We now have an incredible creative team, and I’m looking forward to completing the Smash journey which began with my producing partners over 10 years ago."
Adds Meron: "Ever since the show ended in 2012, not a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask us when will they see Smash as a musical. We think we’ve come up with something the die-hard series fans will love but that will also be exciting for people who never saw an episode of the show. And above all else it will be a valentine to the Broadway musical and the exhilarating rollercoaster ride of bringing one to life."
Visit SmashBroadway.com.
