Get your striped shirts, disaffected expressions, and tap shoes ready: a Seattle-based musical, centered on the world of grunge music, is on its way. That’s per Variety, which notes that the Seattle Repertory Theatre has commissioned a new play based on the world of ’90s-era alt-rock.
What’s interesting about the project is that the theater has apparently struck a licensing deal with BMG, which owns the rights to music from bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Smashing Pumpkins. Given that former Nirvana manager Janet Billig Rich (who also helped assemble Rock Of Ages) is also aboard the project, the phrase “Kurt Cobain jukebox musical” is now just biding its time to explode out into the world. (It doesn’t help that the play’s plot will reportedly focus on “a brilliant grunge musician” who meets an untimely death.)
As Variety notes, interest in the grunge scene has been reignited lately by the high-profile death of Audioslave and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, who died in May in what authorities have ruled was a suicide. Smelling the teen spirit in the air, the theater is apparently well on its way to fielding a “wish list” of songs to reproduce and commercialize for the play (which, to be fair, is in of itself a pretty apt way of recognizing grunge’s legacy and ultimate death).