Plans announced for Mystic Pizza musical featuring '80s and '90 music icons

The Mystic Pizza musical, which was announced in January 2019, will now premiere this summer at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine – though invariably may end up closer to these shores.

Melissa Etheridge was originally slotted to write the score. The score will now include classic songs by her as well as a host of other '80s and '90 music icons including the Bangles, Wilson Phillips, REO Speedwagon, Belinda Carlisle, Rick Astley, John Cougar Mellencamp, Debbie Gibson, Robert Palmer, Berlin, Van Morrison, the Supremes, Phil Collins, Kim Wilde, Mike and the Mechanics, Fine Young Cannibals, Tiffany, Bryan Adams, and Starship.

The musical, based on the 1988 MGM motion picture Mystic Pizza written by Amy Holden Jones, will feature a book by Sandy Rustin, and arrangements and orchestrations by Carmel Dean. Casey Hushion will direct. Previously, Gordon Greenberg was attached to direct the project and co-write the book with Sas Goldberg.

The film, which stars Julia Roberts and Matt Damon, follows the coming-of-age of three young women working as waitresses at a local pizza parlor in Mystic, Connecticut. Struggling within a local class structure that segregates the immigrant working class from the country club set, the women strive to define themselves beyond the shadow of their families and the men who pursue them.

Funnily enough, a fictional Broadway musical adaptation of the film had served as a plot point in the early part of season 2 of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock.

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