Revised Go-Go Beach Musical, a NYMF Veteran, Riding a Wave of Interest
By Kenneth Jones
22 May 2008
Go-Go Beach, the pop-flavored musical comedy take on '60s beach-party movies that was seen in the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2006, is popping up in theatres around North America and beyond.
The show's 15th production (since its first developmental staging in 2003) will be June 4-22 on the Showboat Majestic, docked in Cincinnati on the Ohio River. New York City composers Brent Lord and Mike Shaieb told Playbill.com they'd be attending the June 21 performance there.
The musical has book and lyrics by Canadian playwright John Wimbs, who told Playbill.com that Go-Go Beach was revised after the NYMF run. He said the Equity NYMF staging, which played to packed houses, allowed the writers to take a great leap forward in the storytelling.
"NYMF was a great experience because it gave us yet another opportunity to work with a great cast and creative team to stage a fully realized production of the show in front of an audience," Wimbs said. "By the time we got to NYMF, we'd already done a few workshop stagings at festivals and colleges, and we had the great opportunity of having a commercial Korean-language production in Seoul.
"Right after the opening performance at NYMF, we saw that there were some fairly bold changes that could be made to tweak the running time and order of a few scenes.
It was odd watching the old version of the show on stage while we had already in our minds worked out some of the further revisions. If we were in an out-of-town tryout situation, we could have easily gotten it all done."
The current version of Go-Go Beach is a one-act, 90-minute experience being licensed through Theatrical Rights Worldwide (www.theatricalrights.com).
Wimbs, Lord and Shaieb said colleges and school groups, especially, are now showing interest in Go-Go Beach.
"That makes sense the show is about teens coming of age," Lord said.
There is interest in Go-Go Beach from as far away as Australia: A student production will play Wagga Wagga, Australia, June 23-25. The musical had its Canadian high school premiere in April on Prince Edward Island.
Wimbs said, "We never gave up on the show, and it was well worth it. We are all really happy with the way it has turned out. Now we are all working on new projects, and hope to team up again sometime soon."
Here's how the authors bill the show: "Go-Go Beach is a new musical fable about the shift of consciousness in America in the mid-'60s, told in the style of the popular California beach-party movies. It's a coming-of-age story about a surfer who gets into trouble with his girlfriend when he falls for a runaway teen pop star, and his relationship with a flower child who helps him find the true meaning of love."
For more information visit theatricalrights.com or gogobeach.com.
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