The Black Parade Musical
According to this weeks issue of Kerrang! magazine, a musical version of My Chemical Romance’s breakthrough album, The Black Parade, is set to make it’s debut in 2015. The show will be produced by MCR fan, Alexandra Conroy, who hopes for a run of the show on Broadway. Following excerpt from Kerrang! magazine.
It’s one of rock’s most theatrical concept albums ever, and now The Black Parade looks set to follow Green Day’s American Idiot in taking a new life on the stage.
My Chemical Romance’s crowning glory – released in 2006 – is currently undergoing its transformation from thee-million-selling record to full-scale theater production in the U.S. with a view to opening later this year or early in 2015.
“I’ve always been in love with this album,” playwright Alexandra Conroy, who’s been working on the project since 2010, tells Kerrang!, “I was about 15 when the album came out, and I was in (New York’s) Times Square right outside Virgin Megastore store, and it was the first time I head Welcome To The Black Parade in stereo. I felt the earth move, and after that I knew the album was something special.Kerrang! Article
“It’s defiantly my own interpretation (of the narrative),” she explains. “It’s a story about a young German woman named Helena during the tome of the Nazi occupation of Poland in the 1940s. Helena is so sheltered because her father is a high-ranking officer rising in the ranks, and she doesn’t really know all thetragedies of war. She happens to meet Ari, one of the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, and it’s defiantly a Romeo and Juliet story. They attempt to run away together… and thats all I’m going to tell you so I don’t ruin the ending!”
With the production’s script finished, Aleandra is currently in the process of taking some of MCR’s most beloved songs and fitting them to the story.
“I really want to stay faithful to the originals because they are such great songs”, she says. “Because it’s musical theatre, some songs are duets, and there may be a little more harmony in there. I think maybe I’ll make three songs a little more acoustic and intimate, so you can maybe feel more what the characters are, but other than that I wouldn’t touch them. They won’t run in the order that they do on the record, though.”And while frontman Gerard Way continues to explore new projects since My Chem’s split in March 2013, Alexndra had an offer to extend to him…
“I think the bands really going to love it, because it’s something different,” she begins, “And, y’know, if Gerard is reading this, there’s a pat he would e perfect for if he wants to dabble in Broadway! (laughs)”.
For more information on the project, check out BlackPaadeMusical.com. There are also official Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr pages for the production.
Head on over to Kerrang.com for more information on the current issue, which is available now.