Scottsboro Librettist David Thompson Working on New Musicals With Stew, Scott Ellis

By Robert Simonson
April 1, 2010

David Thompson, the librettist for the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway hit, The Scottsboro Boys, is currently developing new musical projects with composer Stew and director Scott Ellis.

"I'm working with Stew and Heidi Rodewald on a musical version of 'The Blue Angel,'" he told Playbill.com. "The Blue Angel" was a 1930 film by Josef von Sternberg. It brought worldwide fame to its star, Marlene Dietrich, who played Lola Lola, a cabaret performer who works at a club called The Blue Angel.

Thompson is also collaborating with director Scott Ellis (Curtains, The Little Dog Laughed) on a musical based on "Little Miss Marker," a 1934 film which starred Shirley Temple as a little girl who is left by her gambling father with a group of gangsters as a "marker." When the father dies, the hoodlums are stuck with the kid, and grow fond of her.

The show will employ the catalogue of composer Harold Arlen for its score. "If you're going to do a story set in the 1930s, you might as well use music from the 1930s," said Thompson.