King-Mellencamp musical tuned up for Alliance Theatre 2012 run
By Howard Pousner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Suspense has surrounded "Ghost Brothers of Darkland County," the Stephen King-John Mellencamp musical that the Alliance Theatre announced for the 2008-09 season, then promptly delayed. But the on-then-off-then-oft-rumored world premiere is officially back on again, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.
Atlanta's biggest theater, which announced only the first part of its 2011-12 season earlier this month, saved a big surprise for Wednesday's announcement of the second half, carried exclusively in the AJC, including "Ghost Brothers" among its final four plays.
The King-Mellencamp collaboration, with musical direction by renowned producer T-Bone Burnett ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), will close the Alliance main stage season in spring 2012. Alliance artistic director Susan V. Booth will direct. That, too, is a surprise if you believe Web sites such as Liljas Library: The World of Stephen King (
www.liljas-library.com), which has quoted Mellencamp as saying that Swedish actress Liv Ullmann would helm it.
The Alliance describes the show as a "Southern Gothic musical fraught with mystery, tragedy and ghosts of the past."
The fate of the show itself has been a bit of a mystery. When it was delayed in May 2008, Booth said in an Alliance statement that the creative team was "in agreement with the evolution of the new work-in-progress and the direction it was moving in development" but realized that "the script would not be ready by spring 2009."
There were numerous online reports that the musical would be part of the Alliance's 2010-11 season. But then it wasn't included in the lineup announced in February 2010, and the Alliance had nothing to say officially then on the show's prospects.
"The Alliance one time previously – and one time only – announced this show," theater spokesman Terry Sagedy said Tuesday. "The postponement at that time was due to the challenges of delivering revisions in time for the scheduled production dates.
"Obviously, with a creative team of this stature, there’s a lot of attention and speculation," he continued. "Fact is, we’re going forward with the piece’s premiere at the Alliance in 2012."
Sagedy added that Booth, as the director, had given input on the script.
Also being announced Wednesday: Yasmina Reza's comedy "God of Carnage"; "Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls" by Meg Miroshnik, eighth winner of the Alliance's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition; and Stephen Jeffreys' bluesy drama "I Just Stopped By to See the Man."
The Alliance's earlier 2011-12 announcement was highlighted by the Tony-winning musical "Into the Woods"; a revival of "Golda's Balcony" with its original Broadway star, Tovah Feldshuh; and "Broke," a world premiere comedy by Atlanta playwright Janece Shaffer. A Second City comedy revue, "A Christmas Carol" and the family shows "The Real Tweenagers of Atlanta" and "The Wizard of Oz" completed the initial announcement.
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