Bruce is the new musical from the Seattle Repertory Theatre based on Jaws’ screenwriter Carl Gottlieb’s memoir The Jaws Log.
Bruce is about 26-year old director Steven Spielberg who sets out to adapt the best-selling novel, Jaws. Deadline reports, the show features music by Richard Oberacker and lyrics by Oberacker and Robert Taylor.
This isn’t the duo’s first rodeo as they are the team behind the Broadway musical Bandstand, which follows military veterans upon their return from war. Bruce will be directed and choreographed by Donna Feore, who is most noted for her work at the Stratford Festival.
The show was supposed to debut summer of 2021, but the pandemic put the premiere on hold. Previews of the show begin May 27, 2022, at Seattle Repertory Bagley Wright Theatre, with opening night set for June 1, 2022. The show will run through June 26, 2022. Cast and creative announcements to come soon.
The synopsis of Bruce is as follows: “While invading a sleepy fishing island off Cape Cod to shoot on the open ocean, he faced several challenges including weather, water, hostile locals, an exploding budget, endless delays, and a highly dysfunctional mechanical star named Bruce, to bring his vision to life in what proved to be one of the biggest success stories in film history.”
While Bruce is an adaptation of a book based on a film, the trend of movies turned stage off-broadway musicals isn’t new. The first one that comes to mind is The Evil Dead. The show was performed on stage in 2003 at the Tranzac club in Toronto, Ontario. The show instantly became a hit and eventually moved on to an off-Broadway run in 2006 at the New World Stages.