Sing Street, the sold-out Off Broadway musical that was set to begin performances at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre just as the COVID-19 shutdown hit, is now targeting an opening sometime between winter 2021 and winter 2022.
The announcement was made Monday by producers Barbara Broccoli, Brian Carmody, Patrick Milling Smith, Michael Wilson, Orin Wolf and Frederick Zollo. An as-yet-unspecified Shubert Organization theater will house the production.
“We want to be responsible and strategic about creating a proper runway to launch our new musical on Broadway,” the producers said in a statement, “which includes a longer period of time from when Broadway theater reopens. We will announce a new date to open on Broadway sometime between the winter of 2021 and 2022 based on the availability of a Shubert Theater.”
Staged Off Broadway in 2019 by the New York Theatre Workshop with music and lyrics by Gary Clark & John Carney, a book by playwright Enda Walsh (Lazarus) based on the 2016 film Sing Street written and directed by Carney – the same team behind Broadway’s smash Once – the musical was to have started performances at the Lyceum on March 26, 2020, with an opening night of April 19, but the plans were scotched when Broadway shut down on March 12 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The musical, directed by Tony Award winner Rebecca Taichman (Indecent), follows a group of Dublin teens in the 1980s who form a New Wave band to escape troubled home lives and small town drudgery. The score includes a smattering of ’80s hits by MTV-era groups such as Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, and choreography by Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge). The production drew critical praise for the lead performance by Brenock O’Connor (Olly in Game of Thrones). A cast recording was released by Sony Masterworks Broadway in April.
Other productions scuttled by the shutdown include Take Me Out, Caroline, or Change, The Music Man, Flying Over Sunset, American Buffalo, Plaza Suite and The Minutes. Birthday Candles and the Michael Jackson musical MJ. Most have rescheduled their Broadway plans for spring or fall 2021.