'My Life is a Musical' Smashes Down Stereotypes

Depending on the crowd, talking about musicals can be hard business. And playwright Adam Overett has heard it all.

“It’s cheesy,” they’ll say. “It’s stupid,” they complain. “I can’t buy it,” they pout.

Quite frankly, Mr. Overett can’t blame them. Musicals are not realistic, he said. But, perhaps, that is precisely the point.

The actor-singer-writer-composer had been kicking around this idea for nearly a decade—between his Broadway and national tours of “The Light in the Piazza” and “Dirty Dancing”—and, finally, in 2012, penned the book, music and lyrics for his newest production, “My Life Is a Musical,” making its world premiere on Tuesday, July 29, at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“I thought it would be funny if there were a person for whom this was reality, if that were someone’s life—people bursting into song around him,” Mr. Overett said last week during a telephone interview, taking a break from rehearsal in Manhattan. “‘Musicals are so dumb,’ people would tell him. And he’d think, ‘Uh, but that’s what happens to me.’”

The production’s lead role, Parker—portrayed by Howie Michael Smith—is unlike anyone else. When he wakes up in the morning and leaves his apartment, he hears people singing. He watches them dance in the streets. No one else knows this is happening. It is his secret to keep, his cross to bear.

And not only does Parker, who works for a rock band, have a hard time telling the difference between his professional life and his delusion—he absolutely hates musicals.

“This guy has kept himself hiding from the world for so long,” Mr. Overett explained. “When he starts to connect to people, he discovers the thing he thought made him a freak, made him strange, is actually the thing that makes him wonderful and interesting.”

Born in Manhattan, Mr. Overett’s family moved to Denver, Colorado, when he was 5 years old. Now back in the big city, the playwright feels like he belongs again—surrounded by theater, dance, and, most important, music. In fact, he finds himself relating to Parker quite often.

“I listen to songs all the time that aren’t songs from musicals, and I’ll stage them in my head,” Mr. Overett said. “I shape things that happen in my life around musical numbers anyway. I’ve been doing it longer than I remember. It’s so deeply ingrained in me. I couldn’t escape it if I tried.”

Mr. Overett’s parents have told their son that he loved music even as a toddler—a slice of his personality that “precedes my understanding of myself,” he said. The boy learned their records so well that he could play a requested song by selecting the matching groove before he could even read.

Today, he can’t imagine a world that is not musical, he said, though his first vivid memory is not until first grade, when he heard a recording of “Cats” and sang a Halloween song afterward.

And just like that, it all came together.

“I went back to the classroom and scribbled out different lyrics for the song,” he recalled. “I can still remember my teacher saying, ‘How very cool, Adam, you should be a lyricist. Do you know what that is?’ ‘Nope.’ All I knew was that I loved the idea that there were characters singing a song. And I loved stories.”

Mr. Overett, who graduated from Yale University in Connecticut with a bachelor’s degree in dramatic literature and music, as well as winning the John Golden Prize for New Musicals, is happily sitting on the non-acting side of the table for “My Life Is a Musical,” leaving that to a cast of eight under the guidance of director and choreographer Marlo Hunter, as well as music director Vadim Feichtner,

“We have a good thing here,” Mr. Overett said. “When you miss the mark in a musical, it does feel wrong. And I wonder if all people who can’t stand musicals have just seen really bad musicals.”

Mr. Overett urges the doubters and the haters to give it another shot. Though “Carousel,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Oklahoma” all have a place in musical history, they are not all there is. “There is a large spectrum. But musicals are so, so hard to get right, especially today. You have to be careful. It really can be uncomfortable to watch people burst into song when it’s the wrong kind of song,” Mr. Overett said.

“I would love nothing more than for someone who hates musicals to come see this show and say, ‘Hey, I had a good time.’ Parker hates musicals. That’s what this show is about. I think so many people say they don’t like them, but secretly love them.”

“My Life Is a Musical” will make its world premiere on Tuesday, July 29, at 7 p.m. at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Additional performances will stage Tuesdays to Sundays through August 31. Tickets start at $62.55. For a schedule, call 725-9500, or visit baystreet.org.