A Musical Fades Away, But Fans Bring It Back
Before “Be More Chill” even starts previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center in New York on July 26, it will already be one of the most popular new musicals in America, with a passionate fan base that dwarfs the number of people who have ever seen the show.
All this after a barely noticed monthlong run in New Jersey three years ago. And a little cast album that found a big audience.
When the show’s songwriter, Joe Iconis, and co-star, George Salazar, did a joint cabaret evening, “Two Player Game,” at Feinstein’s/54 Below in April, audience members flew in from Paris, Berlin and London. A pair of friends drove from Florida. Annalise Heffron, 13, and her mom, Amy Cobb, spent 17 hours on a bus from their home in Cincinnati.
Based on a 2004 novel by Ned Vizzini, the pop-rock musical, with a book by Joe Tracz, tells the story of a high school junior, Jeremy Heere, who ingests a pill-size supercomputer that makes him cooler.
Its only professional production came in June 2015 at New Jersey’s Two River Theater, which commissioned the show. Despite Mr. Iconis’s spirited score and growing track record — he contributed the cult classic “Broadway, Here I Come!” to the TV show “Smash” — no commercial producer came knocking. The chill looked like rigor mortis.
But less than three years later, the cast album has passed 100 million streams in the United States. So it’s not a total surprise that a commercial Off Broadway run is scheduled, only the second professional production so far.
“Knowing that people in such large numbers are connecting to it felt like a perfect opportunity,” said the producer, Gerald Goehring, whose credits include “A Christmas Story: The Musical.”
It’s hard to tell what ignited the frenzy. Newbies would discover vid- eos in the “recommended” column on YouTube, usually after they’d clicked on “Hamilton” or “Dear Evan Hansen” videos, and the internet helped link fans all over the world.
“I was getting tagged in fan art, then I started noticing people were writing fan fiction about my character and Jeremy,” Mr. Salazar said. “I was dumbfounded by all of it.”
The recording entered the Billboard Cast Album chart’s Top 10 a whopping 97 weeks after its release, by Ghostlight.
Animated storyboards known as animatics popped up on YouTube; the most frequently rendered is the tour- de-force song in which Mr. Salazar’s character has an anxiety attack.
“Right after I discovered ‘Michael in the Bathroom,’ I decided to try drawing an animatic for it, even though I still didn’t know what the musical was about,” Claudia Cacace, a 22-year- old who lives near Naples, Italy, said by email. “I just related to the character so much that I felt the need to draw the scene.”
In turn, Dove Calderwood, 27, discovered Ms. Cacace’s art and commissioned her to animate the entire musical.
Another popular take on “Michael in the Bathroom” is an inspired cosplay performance (that is, lip- synced in character and in costume) by a 20-year- old who goes by “Jack or Aless, depending on the situation” and hails from Toronto.
There is no denying that fans are committed. They turned up in droves for an amateur production of “Be More Chill” in November at New Jersey’s Exit 82 Theater.
“It was the most insane attention any of my shows has ever received,” said Mr. Iconis, still sounding slightly stunned. “We needed security for a talkback at a community theater. Security!”
A tardy online frenzy revives a show about a dork.