Grunge: The Musical. No, Really

Imagine for a moment it’s the summer of 1992. Lollapalooza is roaring across North America featuring both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Nirvana is still riding high on Nevermind. A&R people are crawling over each other to find more bands who play rock low, slow and sludgy. Now imagine if someone had said “Hey! Let’s take this whole thing to Broadway!” That person would have been deliberately and meticulously moshed to death.

Now back to the present. A theatre in Seattle is in the midst of developing a grunge musical that’s rumoured to be centred around the music of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. No, really.

The Seattle Repertory Theatre commissioned the project with the libretto based on “a brilliant grunge musician and the rival who may have killed him.” Naturally, it’s set in the 90s. And while there’s no title yet, it will be workshopped in the fall to flesh everything out, including the cast.

This won’t be the first musical to feature the music of Nirvana. Three years ago, Courtney Love mentioned something about a Broadway music featuring Kurt’s music “is very likely to happen.” I wonder what happened to that project?

With reporting from Variety.