Musical combining Hamlet & Pearl Jam to debut in New York

I recently went to a performance of the Broadway production of American Idiot the Musical. After leaving the theater my friend and I briefly tried to figure out what the next album to become a Broadway musical would be. My answer was that there isn’t an album I could think of off the top of my head that would translate well onto the stage.  I don’t think there are many bands out there that can write great concept records, let alone a concept record that would translate well onto the stage.

Then tonight I read that a theater in New York is debuting a play featuring the music of none other than Pearl Jam, which will be performed live. The play is called A King of Infinite Space and it is a “rock and roll adaptation of Hamlet.”  While this isn’t Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy The Musical, it sounds like it will be about as atrocious as you’d think bringing one of Pearl Jam’s records to the stage would be. Oh, and then of course you have to add in the Shakespeare which will obviously goes hand-in-hand with Pearl Jam.

Here’s the description of the production:

This rock and roll adaptation of Hamlet resets the existential revenge story in the Lower East Side in the 90s, condensing it into an adrenaline-fueled 80 minutes and framing the story with the songs of Pearl Jam, performed live.

Hamlet returns from college to find his uncle Claude married to his mother and plotting to turn the Elsinore, a historic Lower East Side building, into high priced modern condos in what will soon be known as the East Village. During a wild drug trip with his friend Horacio, he sees the ghost of his father, and vows revenge for his murder at the hands of Claude.

I typically don’t rush to judgement on a piece of art before I see or hear it myself, but I have a two-word review for A King of Infinite Space prior to its opening: Epic. Fail.

h/t to the excellent Pearl Jam fan site The Sky I Scrape.