A Musical and a Makeover Get Spotlight on March 2 "Queer Eye" | Playbill

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News A Musical and a Makeover Get Spotlight on March 2 "Queer Eye" The hit TV makeover show,"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," goes where it hasn't before on March 2 when "The Fab Five" debunk a cultural stereotype: They meet a musical theatre composer who is straight.

That's the twist of the new episode of the pop-culture-rich show seen 10 PM (ET) Tuesdays on the Bravo network.

Composer-lyricist-librettist Warren Loy meets Kyan, Jai, Thom, Carson and Ted, who help him prepare for a reading of his new musical, Up in the Air, a show Playbill On-Line has reported about in the past.

The episode was taped in December 2003 and includes a segment where Up in the Air is seen in a reading that features Broadway stars Hunter Foster (Little Shop of Horrors), Michael Rupert (Falsettos), John Tartaglia (Avenue Q) and Kelli O'Hara (Sweet Smell of Success).

Loy, 24, who wrote the show with composer-librettist (and roommate) Chris Todd, told Playbill On-Line the December reading lured a lot industry folk from producing offices, and showed the writers that the show's moments landed the way they intended. The reading, directed by Michael Scheman, represented a showing of the first act of the musical comedy.

"We got a lot of great feedback from producers," Loy said of the December reading. Meanwhile, Loy got the requisite "Queer Eye" makeover for himself and his Washington Heights pad. His girlfriend, Kristina Wilson, even made an appearance on break from musical theatre studies on Oklahoma City.

Writers Loy and Todd knew each other from Oklahoma City where they both shared the dream of writing for musical theatre. In 1998, fresh out of school, they joined the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, where Up in the Air has been developed in recent seasons, including in a BMI master class with Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.

"We are making some second-act revisions and hoping to have a public reading in the spring," Loy told Playbill On Line.

Up in the Air focuses on a young inventor named Greg (played in December by Hunter Foster) who must decide between a million dollars and the woman of his dreams, named Farran (O'Hara in the reading). Jerry (Tartaglia in the reading) is his zany sidekick and pal, and an Impresario (Rupert) oversees it all.

Audience members interact with the cast and determine the direction of the plot.

Many of the plot lines lead to the death of Greg, but Loy said the show's tone is "more zany than dark."

And his "Queer Eye" experience?

"I had so much fun," Loy said. "The guys were all great."

For more information about Up in the Air, write [email protected].

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Todd and Loy created a rock musical called Fantastic Alice, which had a staging in their native Oklahoma and was seen in piece in the BMI workshop, where they are now advanced members.

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For more "Queer Eye" information, visit www.bravotv.com.

 
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