Good news for those of us who can never get enough Jane Austen adaptations: Apparently, theater professionals in London and New York are working on a new musical based on Emma.
London casting for an upcoming workshop production was announced last week, and an invitation-only reading was held in New York last September. The show’s book and lyrics are by playwright Meghan Brown, and the music is by composer Sarah Taylor Ellis.
It’s encouraging to see an all-female writing team behind this show, especially one whose previous collaboration is a feminist musical about slumber-party guests possessed by demons. Perfect preparation for Jane Austen!
You can’t call the whole Emma-as-a-musical-thing a new idea, however: A quick Google search informs me that an Emma musical by Paul Gordon was presented in New York in 2006, as part of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals, and an apparently completely different version, by Joel Adlen, showed up the following year as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival.
And that’s not even to mention Eric Price’s Emma! A Pop Musical, which seems to be popular with the drama departments of middle schools and high schools. That version updates Austen’s story to high school, Clueless-style, and uses famous pop songs as a score, in the jukebox fashion made famous by shows like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys.
No word on how close the latest show is to a full-fledged production, but you know I’ll be there if it happens.