Is Schmigadoon! Destined to Become a Stage Musical Trilogy? | Playbill

Special Features Is Schmigadoon! Destined to Become a Stage Musical Trilogy?

Creator Cinco Paul on bringing the Apple TV+ series to the stage, and what he had planned for season 3.

Max Clayton, Angel Reda, Eloise Kropp, Brandon Block, and Jess LeProtto Heather Gershonowitz

Apple TV+'s Emmy-winning musical theatre series Schmigadoon! may have gotten cancelled, but it's getting ready to find new life as a stage musical. Before performances begin January 31 at the Kennedy Center, Playbill caught up with series creator and stage adaptor Cinco Paul to find out how the series has been adapted for the stage, get more details on the show's cancelled third season (reportedly titled Into the Schwoods), and more.

The show, which debuted in 2021, tracks a couple, struggling to save their relationship, who suddenly find themselves in Brigadoon Schmigadoon, a magical world populated with characters, plots, songs, and dance numbers seemingly plucked from Golden Age musicals like Oklahoma!The Music Man, and Carousel. The second season saw them trapped in Schmicago, a darker world filled with callbacks to the Broadway musicals of the '60s and '70s.

The series was, to put it mildly, a theatre nerd's dream, both lampooning and paying homage to the art form we love so dearly. Here at Playbill, we most delighted in breaking down the countless show references in all 12 episodes. Paul and his writing team showed they were true theatre nerds just like us, because there was lots to talk about throughout, from the easily recognizable to the truly deep cuts. Start here if you want to re-visit those re-caps.

After Schmigadoon! was cancelled by Apple (while the third season was in production), Paul immediately turned his sights on a stage musical adaptation. Paul's own career has run the gamut, spanning the stage, film, and TV. Along with Schmigadoon!, he (with Ken Daurio) is the writer behind such animated films as the Despicable Me franchise, The Secret Life of PetsHorton Hears a Who, and The Lorax. And Schmigadoon! won't be his only stage work. Another comedy musical, A.D. 16, about a teenaged Jesus and Mary Magdalene, premiered at Olney Theatre Center in 2022.

The stage version of Schmigadoon! is an adaptation of the show's first season, but Paul shared with us that it wasn't as simple as combining those six episodes. The new show—which is being directed and choreographed by Tony-winning series choreographer Christopher Gatelli and will feature a starry cast of theatre favorites—is keeping the same general story but will have new songs and even some material written for the series that was left on the cutting room floor.

Read our conversation with Paul to find out more. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

You’ve said that Schmigadoon started out as an idea for a stage show before it became a TV series, yes?

Cinco Paul: That was way back, like 25 years ago when I first had the idea. I wasn’t sure what it was. Is this a movie? Is this a stage musical? But I never really did anything with it and set it aside. I never thought it was a TV show back then. So yes, at the very early stages, I wondered if maybe it was a stage musical. But what brought it back was the idea of it as a TV show.

That felt so unusual, wonderfully so, of course. I think us musical nerds are used to theatre feeling like a niche interest. Were you worried about that pitching the show?

Well, I don’t really know what Apple thought about that. I’m just glad they said yes. I always make the mistake of thinking the things I love everybody will love, so I never really thought of it as niche even though it probably was. It was a crazy, weird, very specific show. Apple at that point was in a place where they were looking for things like that. Obviously it’s sad we didn’t get our third season, but I am so grateful and still kind of amazed that we got two seasons of that show.

The loss of that third season feels especially sad to me, because I think that era of musicals is the one that tends to have the largest and arguably most passionate fanbase.

Yeah. Some of them were absolutely huge, like Phantom, Les Miz, Rent, Cats, and Little Shop. Lots of the musicals we were targeting are still in the forefront of the public musical theatre consciousness.

Am I correct that this third season was fully written, including songs?

Yes. I wrote all the songs, I think about 25. We had written six episodes, and it’s all ready to go. My hope is that maybe if the stage version of season one does well enough, then maybe someone will feel inspired to pony up that $30 million for the third season.

And what happens to all of that otherwise? Do you have backup plans, or does it just go into the trunk for a rainy day?

It’s in the trunk. Apple owns the scripts and I own the songs. I’m hoping to get it out there to people somehow, some way, but it may take a little patience.

That gives me hope!

Look, I’m all about hope. I haven’t given up, don’t worry.

Eloise Kropp, Lauralyn McClelland, Angel Reda, Holly Ann Butler, and Kimberly Immanuel Heather Gershonowitz

So tell me how this stage version of Schmigadoon came back around.

It was always in my head. I’d always thought that I’d love to see high schools do this show. And then during the [2023 Writers Guild of America] strike, that became something I could do. So I wrote this stage version with the goal of getting it to high schools, and showed it to [production company] Broadway Video. They did a little sniffing around and decided they thought there was life for this beyond schools, although that’s still a goal of mine. And that’s what led to the Kennedy Center hearing about it and reaching out. This has all been pretty exciting because it was bigger than I had originally envisioned for the show.

That’s a great goal. The shows that Schmigadoon! parodies in that first season are, so many of them, shows high schools still do all the time. Those high schools then getting to lampoon them a bit is fun on their own. It also strikes me as an interesting way to engage with some of the more problematic elements of those older shows, too.

That’s why I initially thought of this for high schools, because they’re probably tired of doing those shows over and over again. This gives them the chance to kind of do Carousel or Oklahoma! or The Music Man without having to do them again. And yeah, we avoid, or outright comment on, some of the problematic aspects that maybe they have to dance around a bit when they do these productions.

Watching the show, it was so clear that you and your entire writing staff loved these musicals a lot. And yet you were also not afraid to lampoon the parts of them that probably should be lampooned, either because they’re funny or they’re legit problematic. How did you walk the line of doing that without feeling like you were fully making fun of these beloved shows?

I think I said day one in the writers’ room that this has to come from a place of love. I love these shows, and the people in our writers’ room loved them too, so it came out of that love and affection. I always talk about it like… you love your parents, but sometimes they say things that make you cringe. That was sort of the attitude towards these shows. I love it so much, but oh I wish that line weren’t in there, or that plot development.

Did you ever have any plot ideas or jokes that got ruled out for being too far, too mean?

Well, there was one pitch at the end of the first season. Everyone is revealing these truths, and I had [the ambiguously young ingénue, played on screen by Dove Cameron] Betsy say, “I’m actually nine years old.” And we actually had Dove say the line—we shot it! But ultimately, I just thought, that’s too far. We’ve gone too far with that. That’s the only one that initially comes to mind. Though, of course, in the writers’ room, things were pitched and shot down.

Alex Brightman and McKenzie Kurtz Heather Gershonowitz

It felt like a magical combo, that tone, that it allowed you to explore why we love these works and why they have persisted even despite some of their more outdated elements—but without glossing over those elements or pretending they’re not there and not great.

It’s something that I think about a lot. I grew up a massive Woody Allen fan, right? And you mention his name now, and you just feel weird. It’s hard striking that balance. But affectionate satire, affectionate playful pastiche is maybe a way to address those things.

Was translating that first season to the stage straightforward?

There was definitely a learning curve for me, even having written musicals before. Initially, I just took all the scripts from those six episodes and plopped them into one file. My first focus was making cuts to get it to a decent length. But I quickly realized that a stage musical is not a TV show. The TV version cuts back and forth to different locations a lot, and you just can’t do that on stage. It’s not practical. Early on I looked at how Oklahoma! works, and was reminded that almost the entire first act is in one location. So the big work was really reducing the amount of locations, and compressing scenes and combining things to make it practically work on stage.

Did you have any wish list changes from making the show that have made their way into this version?

Yeah! The biggest thing is Danny Bailey [the show’s Billy Bigelow-like character, played on screen by Aaron Tveit]. We originally wrote eight episodes, and then Apple chose to do only six. So there was a lot of cutting I had to do before we started production on the first season. As a result of that, there was a whole continuation of the Danny Bailey story that got cut. We basically brought him back just briefly to punch Josh in the stomach. So now we get to keep his story going and keep him alive, and that’s something that the fans of the show will find new in this version. Betsy also originally had her own song that she sang on her date with Josh, and that’s been reinstated and will be a completely new song. Those are the biggest things. But throughout it was an opportunity to re-examine things and maybe fix some things that, after repeated viewings of the show, I realized we could have done better.

I think fans are also wanting to know if there will be any winks or material from the second or even the third season to expect in the show.

Well, we’re never leaving Schmigadoon in this show. But I envision this ultimately as a stage trilogy, and want to adapt all three seasons for the stage.

Hey, if they can do it for High School Musical, why not Schmigadoon!?

Yes! And then it could be done in repertory or something.

I feel like if you get the Schmigadoon! trilogy, you have to find a way to comment on those ill-fated Broadway sequels.

Totally. Because there’s Annie 2, Bring Back Birdie, that Phantom one. You’re so right.

Cinco Paul and Christopher Gattelli Heather Gershonowitz

Was there anything you learned about Schmigadoon! bringing it to the stage that you didn’t from doing the series?

Mostly I have been surprised at how well the material plays. There was an initial fear that the material had been dependent on our amazing series cast. And we obviously have amazing people doing this stage version, but it was so nice to see the material play without Cecily [Strong] or Keegan [Michael Key] or Kristin [Chenoweth] or Jane [Krakowski]. The material was strong enough that it worked with the new people we’ve brought on. We have a fantastic cast.

I’ve also gotten the reminder of how the book of a musical is different from a screenplay. It mostly exists to set up the songs, so you have to be really economical with the book of a musical. A lot of what I did was cutting dialogue. On TV, you have a lot more freedom to have longer dialogue scenes, but in a stage musical, people are anxious to get to the next song. That actually led me to write a new song. There’s a scene between the mayor and the reverend at a bake sale when they discover they both love rhubarb squares. I couldn’t justify that scene on stage without a song, where it certainly worked fine in the TV show. So I had to write a song for the mayor and the reverand, because I love that scene and it’s really important.

Where does your love of musicals come from?

Growing up my mom had cast recordings, albums she loved and I fell in love with as a kid. Primarily I remember Camelot, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls were the ones that got played a lot. In high school as a freshman, I was asked to play piano for our school’s musical, and that was transformative as well. That’s where I really found my tribe and fell in love with musicals anew.

Your career has really spanned all different mediums. Was that a specific aim or just something that happened?

To me, writing is writing. I love it all. When I went to film school, I was so focused on movies, because comedy movies were really what inspired me. It was the Marx Brothers and Billy Wilder—those were the movies that inspired me to become a screenwriter. But comedy has virtually disappeared from the big screen. They’re just not making them anymore. So it was very natural that once I was ready to leave, the animation world and TV was really compelling and interesting to me. Writers just have more control in TV than they do in film, and that was really attractive, too. But I intend for whatever of my career I have left to focus on all three. I want to have stage musicals made, I want to do another TV show, and all that.

I watched another of your stage musicals when it streamed during the pandemic, A.D. 16. I thought it was fantastic, really funny and incredibly tuneful. Is that still kicking around?

Yeah! I thought it would be a little easier path, because I feel like it has the potential to be pretty popular and have a good mainstream appeal, but we’re still working on it. We’ve retitled it Sweet Jesus, and are trying to get another production going.


Tickets for Schmigadoon!, running through February 9 at the Kennedy Center, are available at Kennedy-Center.org.

 
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