“It’s completely different from my pop music,” Breedlove said. “I tapped into what I learned growing up listening to. My parents performed the music of Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Jacques Brel and Kurt Weill. It’s very diverse.”
Stu for Silverton, he said, takes audiences into a “Our Town, Music Man, Hello, Dolly!” kind of world. “I see Stu as one of those red-headed leading ladies of the 50s and 60s, like Dolly Levi, like Gwen Verdon in Redhead, or Lucille Ball in Wildcat, and that’s really how we’ve written him. He’s sort of this fabulous female lead who just happens to have a penis.”
Heavily revised since Seattle, but with the same heart in tow, Stu is strutting his stuff for a slew of industry members Oct. 23-24 as part of the NAMT’s Festival of New Musicals in New York City, which allows new works in development to find future lives at regional theatres across the U.S.