Live and in Stereo

HIGH FIDELITYHITS BROADWAY

The last thing theater mavens need is another pop-rock musical based on a cult film. But with a book by the wily David Lindsay-Abaire,High Fidelity is apt to have the gnawing fascination of both the original Nick Hornby novel and the 2000 film starring John Cusack—concerning a record-store owner and troubled soul. LindsayAbaire defied categorization and stunned theatergoers last season with the searing Rabbit Hole, about a family coping with the death of a child. When the playwright first heard that a musical version of High Fidelity was in the works, he thought it sounded misguided. "I had read the book and seen the movie and I had loved them both immensely," he said during the show's Boston tryout, prior to its December opening on Broadway. "Frankly, I was quite dubious about the idea of someone turning it into a musical." He was converted, however, when he heard several of the songs written by Tom Kitt and Amanda Green. "They were really ironic and soulful and very, very funny," he added. The 36-year-old playwright is currently working on the book and lyrics for a musical version of Shrek, as well as screenplays based on Cornelia Funke's novel Inkheart, with Brendan Fraser attached, and his own Rabbit Hole, which has been optioned by Nicole Kidman. As someone who has always written about alternative realities, Lindsay-Abaire has suddenly become the go-to guy in our increasingly unreal world.

DAVID KAUFMAN