The new musical The Heart of Rock and Roll offers what is currently a rarity on Broadway: a bonafide romantic comedy. The show follows Bobby, a bandleader turned cardboard factory assembly line worker aiming for the corporate sales floor, and Cassandra, the cardboard company’s accountant trying to keep her decades-old family business afloat. As Bobby angles for a promotion, he becomes the man in Cassandra’s corner, but his former bandmates come calling with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Director Gordon Greenberg first looked at a script by book writer Jonathan A. Abrams nearly 10 years ago, in a nascent stage. “What I saw [in the pages], and especially in Jonathan as a person, was that kindness and same generosity of spirit that I associate with ’80s movies that I loved by people like Garry Marshall and John Hughes,” Greenberg said. “A world that now seems innocent by comparison to the way we live and process information. I think it’s not unlike how my parents felt in the ’80s and ’90s about the ’50s.”
Seeing that heart-forward sensibility, Greenberg signed on to the musical — set to a score inspired by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News...READ MORE