Gothic Musical by Stephen King, John Mellencamp Postponed

Several websites (www.theatermania.com, www.playbill.com, etc.) have reported that the new musical written by horror-meister Stephen King and folk/pop/rocker John Mellencamp will NOT be produced at the Alliance Theatre (www.alliancetheatre.org) in Atlanta in the 2008-2009 season after all.

The musical, which is called GHOST BROTHERS OF DARKLAND COUNTY, had been highly anticipated, as neither author has worked on the musical stage before and King, in particular, seems an interesting fir for the genre. (That’s not to say bad, necessarily; but it does seem to promise that he would come up with something either really good or really bad, rather than something mundane and mediocre.) It has been described as “a musical Southern Gothic mystery.”

According to various sites, the idea for the musical is Mellencamp’s, but it seems King is writing the actual book. Mellencamp is creating the score, and on Wikipedia he is reported as saying:

"I plan to have every person sing from their generation. This is what I'm thinking right now, but it may not work out this way. When the 18-year-old sings, he'll be rapping at you. When the people in their 70s are singing, they'll be singing in the style of Broadway or the style of Frank Sinatra or country. I intend to cover any type of music that Americans have invented."

In a Reuters interview, Mellencamp said that the story is set in rural Mississippi in 1957 and involves 2 brothers who hate each other. They go with their father to a cabin where they all used to vacation. But there are ghosts in this cabin, including two older brothers of the father who also hated each other, and who killed each other there.

The theatre indicated that this was a postponement, not a cancellation, in order to give the authors further time to develop and refine the material. (This is a pretty common situation with musicals.)