How Cinco Paul Took ‘Schmigadoon!’ to Broadway — More Than Two Decades Later Than Planned
Categoria: Musica
The Tony-nominated writer and composer on the Broadway show's "out-of-town tryout" on Apple TV+ and his next project: a teen Jesus musical.
Por Billboard | 19/05/2026
Musicals often take many-years-long, meandering paths to Broadway. But even by those measures, the way Schmigadoon! got there is singular. Composer and book writer Cinco Paul first had the idea for a musical that would poke fun at the beloved shows of Broadway’s Golden Age — think Oklahoma! , Carousel , The Sound of Music — more than 20 years ago. Then he took a little detour into big screen animation that happened to include the Despicable Me franchise, Horton Hears a Who , The Lorax and The Secret Life of Pets (all co-written with his collaborator Ken Daurio). But just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Broadway itself, Paul’s longtime dream came true, albeit not quite in the way he’d first imagined: Schmigadoon! became an Apple TV+ show. It told the story of two doctors (played by Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) — one a musical lover, one an avowed hater — who wander into a magical land where life is a musical, complete with frequent song and dance numbers performed by a who’s-who of Broadway regulars including Aaron Tveit, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Ariana DeBose. “I half-jokingly refer to Apple TV+ as our out-of-town tryout,” Paul tells Billboard today. The show got two seasons (the second advanced its focus to musicals of the ’70s and ’80s and accordingly took place in “Schmicago”) before being cancelled in early 2024, despite a third season being already completely written. But a couple of years later, the latest episode in the continuing life of Schmigadoon! has arrived. It’s finally on Broadway — and now tied with The Lost Boys for the most Tony nominations this year (twelve), including best musical and, for Paul, best book of a musical and best original score. “The dream and the hope is that we’re going to be able to do a cast recording,” says Paul. “There’s so much new music and so much that’s changed.” He spoke to Billboard ahead of the Tonys about finally getting a show meant for the theater to the theater itself, and what might come next. You always intended Schmigadoon! for the stage. But having realized it for television first, how do the constraints of each medium compare? I went back to the scripts written even before anybody was cast in the TV show — except for Cecily [Strong], she was always attached — and I realized, “Oh, there’s way too much intercutting back and forth.” You cannot do that on stage — way too many locations. So a lot of it was finding creative ways to limit the amount of scenes and expand those scenes and have some scenes that take three or four story beats that were separate and combine them all into one scene. And then you just discover that the pacing is different on stage — the dramatic requirements and narrative requirements are different in two acts than for six episodes of TV that are leading to a cliffhanger at the end of 25 minutes. And it was an opportunity for me to fix some of the things that I thought maybe we didn&#