October 2, 2007
What’s Next, “Jeffrey Dahmer On Ice”?
We thought this was a joke. We hoped it was. It isn’t. From the Los Angeles Times:
‘Andrew Cunanan–The Musical’?
. . .
For nearly six years, off and on, three respected theater pros — Mark Bennett, Jessica Hagedorn and Michael Greif — have been grappling with its risky, unorthodox material. The template for “Most Wanted,” which begins a two-week workshop production today at La Jolla Playhouse, is the life of Andrew Cunanan, an alluring, chameleonic party boy from the San Diego gay-bar scene. In 1997, he went on an unexplained, 2 1/2 -month cross-country killing spree, climaxing in his infamy-sealing trophy killing of fashion designer Gianni Versace.
The show’s artistic aim, its creators say, is to use the Cunanan saga as a lens for examining America’s celebrity culture, a society in which people whose only assets may be a sexy come-on and a willingness to parade misbehavior in public can become objects of mass fascination.
. . .
“I felt it was symptomatic of a bereftness in our individual lives, that we kept looking obsessively” at the parade of short-term attention-grabbers flitting by on “Entertainment Tonight.” A story like Cunanan’s “could sing in a certain way,” Bennett was convinced. “The tricky part is finding out just what that way would be, finding a structure for the story, and the right people to work with and really explore it.” …
Filed under: Crime, Stage
