Yazbek + Hwang = Bruce Lee!

Update: Gil
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Bartlett Sher will direct the new David Yazbek-David Henry Hwang musical Bruce Lee: Journey to the West, to be produced on Broadway by Elephant Eye Theatrical. Tony nominee Yazbek will pen music and lyrics for the bio musical about the martial arts movie star, and Tony winner Hwang will write the book.

I hope I'm not the only one excited to see a Yazbek/Hwang collaboration.

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6 Comments:

Oh, the idea of a collaboration between these two talented men is indeed exciting. The project they've chosen, however, is not, at least not on paper.

By Chris Caggiano, at 2:49 PM

I don't know... they're going to be playing off of the Journey to the West stories, which lend themselves to theatre well..

I'm going to be optimistic about it for now, despite the "Bruce Lee Story" aspect worrying me...

By Gil, at 2:51 PM

David Yazbek is writing another musical? 'Tis a very good day, indeed!

By Anonymous, at 3:41 PM

I am not excited about any sentence that includes David Henry Hwang and "musical." I think he should stick to his (pretty good) plays and stay away from musical theatre, since he ruined Flower Drum Song and didn't improve Aida or Tarzan any.

By franklinshepard, at 5:10 PM

Yazbek? Awesome!

Hwang? Oh shit.

By gruyere, at 11:20 PM

True, fair enough, David Henry Hwang doesn't know what he's doing with Musicals. I went to a talk with him a few years ago and he explained that there were two types of works he worked on: works that were "his" and works that were "someone else's". He said that the Disney ones were "someone else's", and that they were things that really didn't speak to him but that he was basically a writer for hire.

Actually, Hwang originally went to Disney because he wanted to propose himself as writing the book for Mulan. They said "no, no Mulan, but want to rewrite Aida's book? Here's tons of money."

The question is, is this musical something that comes from Hwang's soul, or that he's doing on commission. Because if it's something that actually speaks to him, he should be able to write a good book for it, musical or not.

[can't really speak for Flower Drum Song... my whole argument above may be ruined because I think rewriting the book for that might have actually been his idea...]

By Gil, at 11:38 PM