Frank Wildhorn is the musical theater composer who brought the world Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel at a comparatively young age. Wonderland: Alice’s New Musical Adventure will be playing the counties for the next few months with aspirations of Broadway. The World Premier will be in Florida at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on November 24th, and run thru January 3rd, 2010. It will then leap to the Alley Theater in Houston, Texas.
Here’s the blurb with a synopsis from their website:
Now, they are most definitely and exactually BACK!In this world premiere of a new musical by lyricist Jack Murphy, book writers Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd and acclaimed composer Frank Wildhorn, Alice is a children’s book writer in Manhattan who is suffering through a creative block, estranged from her husband and alienated from her daughter. It takes a trip to a strange-yet-familiar Wonderland for her to regain her life’s balance and again find the love and everyday magic that reside in us all – if we know how to look.Wildhorn’s score taps into numerous pop styles, and Murphy’s lyrics provide both wit and wisdom.Be among the first to see this exciting new production.
There must be something in the zeitgeist that there’s so many older-Alice-returning projects to hit simultaneously. (Or is this a perennial take on classic children’s literature?) What follows is a slideshow with one of the songs, ending with an advertisement: “Journey with a modern-day Alice to Wonderland and the Looking-Glass World where she must find her daughter, defeat the Queen and learn to follow her heart…”
And here’s a few more musical clips from their website: