After hitting a high note on the big screen, "Sing Street" _ John Carney's 2016 film about Dublin schoolboys who form a band _ is heading to Broadway.
The stage adaptation of the story is currently wrapping up a world-premiere run off-Broadway. It will begin performances at the Lyceum Theatre on March 26 ahead of an April 19 opening night, producers announced Wednesday.
"Sing Street" is the second Carney title to make the jump from the screen to the stage; the adaptation of his 2007 film "Once" won eight Tony Awards including best musical. Featuring catchy and sentimental songs by Carney and Danny Wilson frontman Gary Clark, the movie centered on a teenage boy who forms a rock band with his friends to escape his troubles at home and impress a crush (Lucy Boynton in a breakout performance).
"Though the film addresses the harsh economic realities of the time, as it progresses, it more clearly becomes a fairy tale; an old memory seen through the haze of nostalgia, drunk on the dreams of those who didn't know anything but to dream," Times critic Katie Walsh wrote in her review of the movie.
"It's a sweetly funny, charming and poignant depiction of this very specific time in life _ at once universal and specific _ when anything seems possible. And with killer pop tunes to boot."
Onstage, "Sing Street" is directed by Tony winner Rebecca Taichman ("Indecent") and features a book by Tony winner Enda Walsh ("Once") and choreography by Sonya Tayeh ("Moulin Rouge").
It joins a crowded Broadway season of new musicals, which has yet to premiere the Bob Dylan vehicle "Girl From the North Country," the Princess Diana title "Diana" and the LSD-centric creation "Flying Over Sunset."
It will also be the fifth musical this season to be directed by a woman, alongside the Tina Turner bio-musical "Tina" (Phyllida Lloyd), the Alanis Morissette jukebox musical "Jagged Little Pill" (Diane Paulus), the Henry VIII pop sensation "Six" (Lucy Moss, with Jamie Armitage) and the gender-flipped revival of "Company" (Marianne Elliott).
