The Wedding Singer is a musical with music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and a book by Beguelin and Tim Herlihy. It is based on the 1998 film of the same name. The musical revolves around Robbie, who sings at weddings, his failed relationship with his former fiancée, and his romance with a new love, Julia.
The musical premiered on Broadway in 2006 and had several US tours starting in 2007. It was nominated for the 2006 Tony Award for Best Musical. It subsequently has had many international productions.
Synopsis Act 1 Robbie Hart, a wedding singer, lives with his Grandma Rosie in Ridgefield, New Jersey. He and his band play a great wedding gig ("It’s Your Wedding Day"). During his usual "warm-up-the-crowd routine," Robbie proudly announces that he will be married to his beloved fiancée Linda the next day. At the wedding gig, Robbie meets a waitress named Julia Sullivan, who can't wait to get married ("Someday"). Afterward, Robbie tries to write a sweet (eventually corny) love song to Linda, with help from Julia, whom he had just met during the previous wedding ("Awesome"). The following day, however, Linda dumps Robbie at the altar, with only a note claiming that she wants to be the wife of a rock star and not just a wedding singer ("A Note from Linda"). Meanwhile, an anxious Julia goes out to dinner with her Wall Street banker boyfriend, Glen Guglia, hoping he will pop the question, which he does ("Pop!").
Robbie falls into a deep depression ("Somebody Kill Me"), but is urged by his bandmates Sammy and George, and even his grandmother ("A Note from Grandma"), to use that intense emotion to get back on his feet. However, the angry Robbie does nothing but enrage the guests at the next wedding gig ("Casualty of Love"), and he is soon thrown into the dumpster by the groom and an angry crowd of wedding guests. With some convincing from his friend Julia, Robbie does "Come Out of the Dumpster," but changes his singing gigs strictly to bar mitzvahs ("Today You Are a Man"). After the Shapiro bar mitzvah ("George’s Prayer"), Julia convinces Robbie to help her register for her wedding, as her fiancé Glen is, as usual, busy with business-related affairs ("Not That Kind of Thing").
While at the mall, Robbie and Julia meet up with Julia's cousin and best friend Holly, who convinces the "faux duo" that Julia needs to practice her wedding kiss. Robbie and Julia awkwardly and lovingly kiss, only to be interrupted by the reality that Julia is marrying Glen. After seeing the kiss, Holly decides that she should go out with Robbie. Julia, still shocked by the kiss, hastily agrees with Holly. Much later that night, Robbie, Holly, Julia, Glen, Sammy, and George go to a club in New York City ("Saturday Night in the City"). Here Robbie finally realizes that Glen is a cheater and that he, Robbie, loves Julia. Holly realizes this too and tells Robbie that Julia is marrying Glen because of his money and security. Upon hearing this, Robbie says, "Well, I‘m in big trouble, then. But maybe I could change."
Act 2 The next morning, Robbie visits Glen at his Wall Street office to get a job and learn how to be like him in order to secretly impress Julia ("All About the Green"). Later, Julia and Holly recall the events of the night before and Julia begins to question if rich men are truly better people ("Someday - Reprise"). Sammy arrives and tries to woo Holly, but is given the cold shoulder, but Holly can't help but feel that despite his flaws, there is no other man who could replace Sammy ("Right in Front of Your Eyes"). Later in the evening, a "Glenified" Robbie finds Julia at his doorstep and tries to woo her. When that doesn't work, he accuses her of marrying Glen for his material possessions. Julia is stung and walks away from Robbie, throwing a present in his face: personalized blank sheet music. After all, Julia truly cares about Robbie and wants him to sing at weddings again, especially her own.
Robbie realizes what he's done and drinks his sorrows away at a local bar ("All About the Green - Reprise"). Sammy and George go to the bar and try to convince Robbie that staying "Single" is the right thing to do. Inadvertently, Sammy and George end up persuading Robbie into going to Julia's house to tell her how he really feels. Meanwhile, at Julia's house, Julia is with her mother, Angie, trying on her wedding dress, but is having doubts about marrying Glen because of recent events with her and Robbie. Julia's mother reassures her that Glen really is "Mr. Right" and questions why Julia would leave him for a wedding singer. But Julia still has doubts. Robbie looks into Julia's window and sees her trying on her wedding dress and smiling at her reflection. He thinks it's because she's marrying Glen, but Julia is smiling only because she's imagining being Robbie's wife ("If I Told You"). Robbie comes across Glen in the middle of a bachelor party. Glen invites Robbie, but Robbie simply begs him not to cheat on Julia anymore. Glen gets defensive and condemns Robbie. Robbie gets knocked down and Glen fires him. Robbie goes home drunk and dazed only to find Linda in his bed, wanting him back ("Let Me Come Home"). Before she can fully apologize Robbie falls into a deep slumber.
The next day, Julia goes to Robbie's house to tell him how she really feels, only to find Linda instead. This scares Julia into eloping with Glen to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Robbie wakes up and promptly kicks Linda (the "psycho") out. At Grandma Rosie's 50th anniversary party, Robbie finds out from Holly what happened to Julia. Only then do Robbie and Julia realize that they may never see each other again, and they may never get to tell each other what's on their minds ("Not That Kind of Thing / If I Told You - Reprise").
With urging from his grandmother and Sammy, Robbie goes to the airport and gets on the next plane to Vegas ("Move That Thang"). With the help of a group of Vegas impersonators (Billy Idol, Mr. T, Ronald Reagan, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, Nancy Reagan, and Imelda Marcos), Robbie crashes Julia's and Glen's wedding at the Little White House Chapel and sings his new song to Julia ("Grow Old With You"). Glen is outraged that Robbie and Julia still have feelings for each other and blurts out that he cheated on Julia with "like a hundred other women." Upon hearing this, the impersonators beat Glen up, and Robbie proposes to Julia. She says yes, on one condition: "Will you sing at my wedding?" The answer is a resounding "Yes!" Later, (Mr.) Robbie Hart and (Mrs.) Julia Sullivan-Hart are wed ("Finale").
Production history US The stage musical version of The Wedding Singer had its world premiere with a limited run pre-Broadway engagement at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle. Opening 8 February 2006 (with previews as of 31 January), the 5th Avenue engagement ended with a 19 February 2006 performance.
Al Hirschfeld Theater performance review in The New York Times 28 April 2006 Something Borrowed, Something Renewed: The Return of the '80s in 'The Wedding Singer How quickly our dreary yesterdays become bright, cute and endlessly repackageable. The 1980s, it seems, are to today what the 1950s were to the 1970s (and to part of the 1980s): a supposedly more innocent, picturesquely dopey time when people wore quaint clothes, listened to infectiously inane music and danced goofy tribal dances. Ah, how we laughed.
Hence the return of big hair and shoulders to fashion's runways; the preponderance of Web sites with names like "inthe80s.com"; and animated television scrapbooks, like "I Love the '80s" on VH1, where third-tier celebrities provide snarky commentary about their favorite period bands, movies and celebrities. And now, mining the same much-plundered vein, is "The Wedding Singer," the assembly-kit musical that opened last night at the Al Hirschfeld Theater and might as well be called "That 80's Show."
This transformation of a Hollywood movie into a Broadway musical, a trend that appears as irreversible as global warming, is an example of recycled recycling, or second-hand nostalgia. The film "The Wedding Singer," which became a big hit, thanks largely to its romantic leads, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, was also set in the mid-1980s, but it was made in the late 1990s. Remember the 1990s? Ah, how we laughed. Would that we could recapture the charm and innocence of how we looked at the 1980s in those days.
In fairness, "The Wedding Singer" - which features songs by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin and a book by Tim Herlihy (who also wrote the screenplay for the movie) and Mr. Beguelin - is hardly a low point in a Broadway season that has given us "Lennon," "In My Life" and "Lestat." True, it consists of little more than winks and nods and quotations. Entire stretches of dialogue are composed of titles of vintage songs, which are imitated as dutifully as copyright law allows in Mr. Sklar's pastiche score. And Rob Ashford's choreography is replete with literal-minded tributes to 1980s music videos for era-defining songs like "Thriller," "Material Girl" and "Flashdance."
But the show has at least a flutter of a hedonist's pulse. And if its formulaic catering to an established public appetite feels cynical, the cast members exude earnestness and good nature. They are a personable enough lot, which is not the same as saying that they have personality.
For, as so often happens when good (or even not-so-good) films turn into stage shows, the first things to be jettisoned are sharp edges and authentically quirky characters. (Decades ago, when Broadway still had a mind of its own, the same process occurred when stage shows were made into Hollywood musicals.) I need utter only three words to make my case: "Saturday Night Fever."
The plot of this "Wedding Singer," directed with bland peppiness by John Rando, sticks closely to that of the movie. The title character, Robbie Hart (played here by Stephen Lynch), is a would-be rock star who makes do by fronting a band that plays wedding receptions in Ridgefield, N.J. He's good at his job because he's in love with love and the notion of happily ever after—that is, until he is left standing at the altar by his skanky fiancée (the enjoyably trashy Felicia Finley). His only hope of salvation lies in the form of Julia Sullivan (Laura Benanti), a sweet, clumsy waitress who unfortunately already has a boyfriend, a Wall Street junk bonds whiz kid (Richard H. Blake).
It's a wispy plot, even by the standards of romantic comedy. What made the movie more or less bearable was Mr. Sandler, a king of low comedy, subduing his frat-house instincts to create a surprisingly gentle portrait of a loser. Plus there was the dewier-than-daybreak Ms. Barrymore, who managed to make even vomit jokes smell like roses. (The vomit jokes, by the way, have been nixed for the stage version. The four-letter words remain.) Neither Mr. Lynch nor Ms. Benanti, though obviously gifted, shows much original presence here. Mr. Lynch is best known as a performer of self-subverting comic songs that move from conventional prettiness to shock-effect humor. This would seem to make him a natural replacement for Mr. Sandler.
But while Mr. Lynch is charming as Robbie in an angry or depressed mood (he does especially well by the two oddball songs retained from the movie, written by Mr. Sandler with Mr. Herlihy), he is more often called upon to be appealingly boyish, bringing to mind a less vain, less glib Ryan Seacrest. Ms. Benanti, a dark-haired enchantress in the revival of "Into the Woods," goes Barrymore blond for "The Wedding Singer" and winds up looking like that sharp-featured beacon of on-screen efficiency, Helen Hunt. This Julia has a shrewd, calculating look that makes her less than convincing as a starry-eyed klutz.