For fans of the books and movies alike, there is a new version of ‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ that they may want to check out, as long as they are cool with musicals. Yep, in New York right now there is a Percy Jackson musical titled ‘The Lightning Thief,’ written by Joe Tracz and Rob Rokicki and produced by a not-for-profit theatre company called Theatreworks for USA, which basically tells the story of the first novel of the series. And I say basically because in building the musical Tracz stated that they decided to focus mainly on Camp Half-Blood. According to Tracz while speaking to EW about the main setting for the musical:
“Part of why The Lightning Thief works so well as a piece of theater is that when you read those books, you want to go to camp and hang out with Percy and the other half-bloods. When you’re seeing the show live, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You feel engaged in a part of that environment, in the way that when you read a really good YA book, you want to be in that place. You want to be at Hogwarts. You want to be at Camp Half-Blood.”
Tracz also spoke on how lucky they were that the source material lent itself pretty easily to the idea of a musical:
“The idea in the book is that the underworld is a record company, so for a musical, we got to run with that. Cerberus is a DJ with a Daft Punk-style helmet, and Hades [the god of the underworld] has an aging rockstar thing going on. The book actually gave us a lot of gifts that for a musical was stuff we could take and expand upon.”
One reference (and pun) that they just could not shy away from came in the form of a certain famous river of the dead, which Tracz apparently was still laughing about as he spoke to EW about it:
“We did a little Styx joke in there. If you’re on the river, and you have musical artists who are dead popping up, it felt like we couldn’t shy away from that pun.”
You can stream the entire musical and listen to it yourself below or you can purchase the cast recording if you feel so inclined.
What are your thoughts on Percy Jackson getting the musical treatment? After listening to some of the songs, do you think it is a worthy addition to the pantheon of films/ books adapted for Broadway? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
