Anytime we can bring you new music, it’s a good day here at Theatrely and boy do we have a treat for you today. Deathless, a new indie-folk musical with music and lyrics by Zack Zadek will be available to stream starting Friday, November 7 from Ghostlight Records, and today we have an exclusive first look and listen to Up & Away, performed by Maia Reficco and Sara Kays. 

In a world where the cure for aging and natural death has been released in America, Hayley Serling and her family take a road trip across the country to Niagara Falls to process the loss of her mother, and decide whether or not to live forever without her. A unique hybrid that features recording artists alongside actors, Deathlesis a moving and intimate indie folk musical.

The studio cast includes performances from both rising and established stars from music, theater and film, including Kevin Atwater (acclaimed singer/songwriter), two-time Tony Award nominee Jeremy Jordan (Floyd Collins, Newsies), Sara Kays (celebrated singer/songwriter), Maia Reficco (Hadestown, “Pretty Little Liars”), and Nicolette Robinson (Waitress).

The album features orchestrations and additional production by Justin Goldner and Zack Zadek– is produced by Doug Schadt (Maggie Rodgers’ Alaska), with Jonathan Brielle and Kurt Deutsch serving as executive producers. Pre-save the album and hear the first two singles at ghostlightrecords.lnk.to/DEATHLESS

Deathless was produced at Goodspeed Musicals. The album features A&R Consulting by Tal Oz of Hundred Days and casting by Benton Whitley of Whitley Theatrical.

Additionally, Ghostlight Records has announced that Joe’s Pub (425 Lafayette Street in NYC) will celebrate Deathless: Original Studio Cast Recording with a special release concert on Thursday, November 13 at 9:30 PM. In addition to the show’s creator Zack Zadek, the evening will feature performances by vocalists heard on the album, including Kevin Atwater (acclaimed singer/songwriter), Sara Kays (“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”), and Nicolette Robinson (Waitress), in addition to guest artists Kathryn Gallagher (Grammy winner, Tony nominee, Jagged Little Pill), Jordan Fisher (Sweeney Todd, Hadestown), Morgan Dudley (Hadestown, The Prom), Jane Bruce (Jagged Little Pill, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), and Yazmin DeJesus. The concert will include songs from Deathless, in addition to a few never-before-heard sneak peeks from Zadek’s upcoming projects. Tickets are available HERE.

When a beloved, cult classic movie gets the musical theatre makeover, you hope that its creators will shape the material to fit this new medium. What works on film doesn’t always work on stage. It seems the creators of Romy & Michele: The Musical didn’t quite get the memo. 

This version is an almost beat-for-beat recreation of the 1997 film Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion with an attempt to flesh out the characters that surround the titular duo. Robin Schiff, who wrote the screenplay, serves as book writer here, too. The movie had stars Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, whose giddy chemistry brought real heart to the two lovable oddballs.

Romy and Michele have been best friends since high school. They haven’t accomplished much career-wise, but they live happy and content lives as roommates in LA: going to clubs, designing their own clothes, and living off a diet of gummy bears, jelly beans, and candy corn. Their bubble is popped when they get invited to their 10-year high school reunion and they have to reckon with what, exactly, they have (or, maybe more accurately, haven’t) accomplished since 1987. Desperate to impress the people that used to make fun of them, the duo try to create a backstory as successful businesswomen, specifically as inventors of Post-Its.

The musical has two stars of its own: Broadway’s Laura Bell Bundy and Kara Lindsay. The two stage veterans have no trouble mining the comedy and paying homage to the original while trying to carve out nuances of their own, but unfortunately, they seem to be fighting the material every step of the way, particularly Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay’s music, which doesn’t suit either of their powerhouse voices. (Sanford & Jay are credited with lyrics as well.)

As Christie Masters, head of the A-group and Romy and Michele’s chief bully, Lauren Zakrin, who’s no stranger to making a meal out of theatrical villainesses, runs away with the show. While not given the same expansion as the other secondary characters—the other Sagebrush High misfits, Heather Mooney (Jordan Kai Burnett) and Toby Walters (Je’Shaun Jackson), get backstories more suited to our modern social mores—Zakrin’s star power is impossible to tamp down, even when she’s giving her all to Karla Puno Garcia’s choreography as a member of the ensemble. 

The world created by Jason Sherwood’s scenic design and Tina McCartney’s costumes is one that fans of the film will find fun and familiar, especially when they lean into the camp. 

There’s plenty for Romy & Michele fans to latch onto in this version. Kara Lindsay and Laura Bell Bundy bring the two to life while hitting new beats alongside the moments fans know and love. 

Romy & Michele is now in performance at Stage 42. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Far be it from me to suggest Ireland’s venerable Druid Theatre Company has an unsteady grasp on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, but at least in comparison to Irish Rep’s production from 2023, their take on the post-apocalyptic absurd lacks firm grounding. In that one, Hamm, a chair-bound tyrant overseeing his shoddy, one-room kingdom, savored each of his ridiculous proclamations, and his slave (is it?) Clov, seemed the result of ages of systematic denigration – what the Hamms of the world had willed all others to become in subservience. And Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, literally discarded and relegated to live in trashcans inside that room, seemed to take their situation in stride. Everyone was content with their lot in life; queasy for us, but what else do they know? In a play where nothing happens, taking place long past the last time anything good happened, characters must be as sure of themselves as the apocalypse is of itself, because unaware idiots will continue playing their parts even past the endtime; maybe that’s why they survived.

Directed by Garry Hynes, Rory Nolan’s Hamm and Aaron Monaghan’s Clov are too self-aware, whinier and more interested than the exoskeletal puppets Beckett’s play seems to call for. Along with Bosco Hogan and Marie Mullen’s Nagg and Nell, they’re too emotionally invested in each others’ requests for the comedic absurdity to come through. Allowing them the humanity of discontent, let alone dissent, works against the piece, and suddenly we’re just watching four people vainly complain for 90 minutes. Francis O’Connor’s appealing set, a concrete cylinder dotted with water stains suggesting a seaside turret, suggests a brutalism the rest of the production does not achieve.

Endgame is in performance at Irish Arts Center on 11th Avenue in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.