Prepare to blast off with this musical space odyssey of Shakespearean proportions. Exploding with over thirty cosmic hits of classic rock-n-roll, and playfully based on The Tempest and the cinematic sci-fi classic, this fun-filled musical rockets Shakespeare’s beloved characters from stage to space. With songs including “Great Balls of Fire,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “The Monster Mash,” and “Good Vibrations” along with some of Shakespeare’s most iconic phraseology catapulted through hyperspace into a campy concoction, this rare opportunity to experience this Olivier Award-winning musical is not to be missed. |
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“Return to the Forbidden Planet is a desecration, recreation, or consecration, depending on whom you ask,” according to Theatre Weekwhen the show opened in New York in 1991 at the Variety Arts Theater. Like its forebear The Rocky Horror Show, some fell in love with it, some were angered by it and some were just baffled. This was a show that combined three elements that were unlikely to meld: classic rock and roll, early science fiction movies, and Shakespeare’s masterful final play, The Tempest. Yet somehow it all worked. In hindsight we can see that Return to the Forbidden Planet, which trades in the sly, self-referential humor that musical theatre came to embrace in the 1990s, resembles other quirky shows that came after it, like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Urinetown, and Spelling Bee, but also reaches back to the largely subliminal social commentary of Rocky Horror, Grease, and the original “Star Trek.” This was a show that spoke to the end of the Cold War and speaks to us again today in a new era of a global anxiety.
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