THIS MANGA IS A FRANK WILDHORN MUSICAL
While he was away from Broadway, this American composer became one of the most popular theater creatives in the world. Now he's readying his return to New York and London.
REPRINT OF THE 2024 COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT THE WORLD OF WILDHORN THROUGH JANUARY 2024
With The 2024 World Premieres Of Kane and Abel & Einstein: A Matter of Time; the Historical Opening of Your Lie In April on Two Continents on the Same Night - In London’s West End and in Seoul; the release of the London Cast Recording of Your Lie In April on GhostLight Records & the release of the Wonderland Cast Recording from St. Gallen; No Longer Human Winning Most Popular Chinese Original Musical of the Year with Wildhorn Being Named Outstanding Composer of the Year (the first for an American) along with numerous major Awards for the Cast and Production at the China Musical Theatre Association ‘Night of Glory’; Bonnie & Clyde Live - the West End ProShot Being Released Worldwide On Streaming Platforms, A New Symphony and So Much More To Come, Here’s A Chance To Catch Up on Frank Wildhorn’s work with the help of Gordon Cox, Creator of Jaques, the premiere source of information on International Theatre, Contributing Theater Editor at Variety and Host of the Stagecraft Podcast.
JAN 9, 2024
Death Note: The Musical in Concert, West End, 2023. Courtesy of the production.
SPOTLIGHT: WILDHORN, INC.
Back in October I spent a rainy Saturday morning at New York Comic Con getting to know Death Note: The Musical. It was the first I’d heard of the show, a seemingly unlikely stage adaptation of a hugely popular manga about a homicidal high school student with a stringent moral code, the death spirit who enables his supernatural killing spree, and the enigmatic detective on his trail. Among the performers at the Comic Con showcase was Adam Pascal, the Broadway fan-favorite who was in the original cast of Rent. He sang a few songs as a death angel named Ryuk.
This startling cultural collision was new to me, but Death Note isn’t a new musical. It’s been around since 2015, when it premiered in Tokyo in a Japanese-language production. It’s since played two more runs in the city, one in 2017 and one in early 2020, and has also played Moscow and Rio. A 2022 staging in Seoul won the Korean equivalent of the Tony Award for best musical. Last year, a West End concert version, initially planned for two nights at the London Palladium, sold out so quickly that they added one more performance there and then ran another eight shows at the Lyric Theatre.
And it turns out this manga-to-musical adaptation isn’t just a one-off. I discovered to my surprise that Death Note is one of three manga-based titles on the resume of Frank Wildhorn, the American composer (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Bonnie and Clyde) who was omnipresent on Broadway in the late ’90s but hasn’t had a show play there in more than a decade.
Those three manga shows are just the tip of the iceberg. Over the last 20 years, the prolific Wildhorn has written a whole raft of musicals (find the full list at FrankWildhorn.com) that have made him one of the most popular theater composers in the world—even if most Americans don’t know these shows even exist.
It’s no secret that sometimes there’s a whiff of Broadway snobbery in American attitudes toward Wildhorn’s work. (See, for example, the 2000 profile in the Washington Post winkingly headlined “The Scourge of Broadway.”) But with a big, varied catalog of musicals regularly produced all over the world, and commissions from producing organizations in Switzerland, Korea, Japan and China, it’s clear that Wildhorn writes work that connects—and that the pace and breadth of his career has given him a unique perspective on the international theater industry.
So I gave Wildhorn a call to hear him tell it in his own words. In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight:
the factors that played a role in the global growth of his career, and the insights he’s gleaned along the way
the differences he sees in local markets and audience appetites
his take on the state of the international industry and his advice for young artists and producers
the two shows he calls the “one-two punch” of his imminent return to New York and London
I reached Wildhorn at his home in Hawaii, a location he likes because it makes his frequent travels to Asia a little easier, and because the time zone agrees with his writing schedule. (Plus, you can’t beat the weather.) Here’s our conversation, presented as a Q&A and edited for length and clarity.
THE PUSH OUT THE DOOR
Frank, when and how did it become clear to you that international was going to become a major part of your career?
I have to give all the credit to Freddie Gershon1, who is my Yoda and the smartest man in show business. It was in the early 2000s, coming off of having three shows on Broadway at the same time.2 Freddie’s company MTI was starting to license my shows around the world and he said to me, “Frank, you’re a pop guy, so you know how much a percentage of your income, and the income of your family and your children, comes from international royalties. Every time we license one of your shows around the world, you get two first class tickets to see those productions and make those relationships. You need to take advantage of that.” It was Freddie who pushed me out the door.
Pretty soon after that your international work really picked up momentum. How’d that come about?
It all began with production companies around the world licensing my Broadway shows like Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Dracula, Wonderland, and Bonnie and Clyde, but then we started to run out of those shows. At the same time, these young producers around the world, especially in Asia, got their act together and got government sponsors and corporate sponsors, and now they had the money to really do first class productions. And then of course their egos started to say, “Why are we just importing work all the time? Why can’t we create shows and export them?”
It was maybe 10 or 15 years ago that things started to change from international producers focusing on licensing and importing Broadway shows to focusing on commissioning and exporting new work. Now when we come up with titles for potential shows—they used to be mostly my ideas, but now it’s mostly commissions and stuff, especially in Japan with all these manga shows that I'm doing. That’s kind of where we are now.
A lot of these European and Asian producers, they want star-driven productions that really showcase their artists, and because of my pop background I was used to writing songs that frame stars. So the kinds of things I was writing were very in tune with what these producers wanted.
Tell me more about that connection you’re drawing between your background in pop3 and the international work you’re doing now.
Back when I used to write for Natalie Cole and Kenny Rogers and Whitney Houston, I was a blue collar songwriter. My kids were not gonna eat if stars were not recording my songs. So I grew up in a world where there’s an artist whose picture is on the cover, and it’s your job to frame the artist. Don’t go showing people how clever you are. I was taught that you try to make an emotional connection between your music and the artist, so the artist can make the emotional connection between them and the audience. You frame the artist. I never stopped doing that.
A still from the 2006 anime adaptation of Death Note. ©Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata/Shueisha ©DNDP, VAP, Shueisha, Madhouse
LET’S TALK ABOUT THOSE MANGA MUSICALS
I was initially struck by the fact that you’ve made three musicals (and counting!) based on manga, but then I realized it shouldn’t be all that surprising. Manga is just another form of mass entertainment that generates popular stories the way movies do.
I didn’t even know what manga was until a Japanese producer with HoriPro gave me Death Note and said “We’re thinking about doing a musical of a manga.” I said, “What's a manga?” But I asked my son about Death Note, and he said, “Dad, this is so much hipper than the shit you do in America. This tops all that! Call them and tell them you’re doing this.”
The story of Death Note has a kind of high-drama, Gothic-opera vibe that’s not too far off from Jekyll & Hyde, so I can see why they thought of you for it. And then Your Lie in April seems like an obvious fit for a musical. It’s a tear-jerker of a love story set in the world of classical music.
I love that it’s a story about the healing power of music in our lives, and coming of age, and what music means to us as we grow older. And not only that, I get to write a score where I can use the most famous classical music and put it alongside my music, because these teenage characters are in a classical music competition. I’m hoping that as the show gets licensed around the world, it’ll expose younger generations to classical music, which is so necessary right now.
For me the real head-scratcher is Fist of the North Star. It’s this violent, post-apocalyptic story that revolves around an escalating series of superpowered martial arts battles. How do you make that one into a musical?
My basic rule for why I write a show is that the characters have to be bigger than life, in situations where the stakes are higher than life. The combination of the two makes opera. So even though Fist of the North Star is strange and violent, it still fits that bill.
2023: THE YEAR IN WILDHORN
The 2022 Seoul production of Death Note wins Best Musical at the Korea Musical Awards (Jan)
XCalibur documentary film gets a theatrical run in Japan (Jan)
Filmed version of Monte Cristo screens in Korean cinemas (Jan)
Bonnie and Clyde plays Takarazuka Revue in Tokyo (Feb)
The West End production of Bonnie and Clyde wins Best New Musical at the WhatsOnStage Awards (Feb)
Jekyll & Hyde launches a Japanese tour (Tokyo, Yurakucho, Aichi, Yamagata and Osaka) to mark 20 years since it premiered there (March)
Bonnie and Clyde returns to West End for an 11-week run (March)
Death Note begins a return run in Seoul (April)
Bonnie and Clyde opens in São Paolo in a run that overlaps with the show running concurrently in Tokyo and on the West End (April)
New York City workshop for The Song of Bernadette (June)
XCalibur opens at Takarazuka Revue in Tokyo (July)
The English-language, concert staging of Death Note plays an extended, 11-performance run on the West End at the London Palladium and the Lyric Theatre (Aug)
No Longer Human opens in Shanghai (Aug)
Death Note has its first foray in New York with a Comic Con showcase and listening party (Oct)
Monte Cristo and Dracula launch concurrent runs in Seoul (Nov-Dec)
Your Lie in April: The Concert announced for English-language, West End run in April 2024 (Dec)
Wildhorn and K-pop star Junsu Kim are special guest stars at Tokyo and Osaka performances of Yoka Wao’s Holiday Spectacular/35th Anniversary Celebration (Dec)
CREATING ACROSS CULTURES
How do you develop a new show specifically for a premiere production in a language you don’t speak?
I’d say about 75% of the time, if someone is commissioning a Wildhorn show, they’re expecting me to bring in an English-language book writer and lyricist, and then it’ll be translated. The rest of the time—Fist of the North Star is one of those shows where they asked me to do it, but they wanted me to do it with a Japanese team from the very beginning. So it’s my music with this Japanese book and Japanese lyrics. The Japanese lyricists, they’ll hear my music and then they do what they do. They’re artists themselves, and I trust that.
Do you write differently depending on the market you’re writing for?
As an example, the Japanese audience tends to be older, and the performance schedule has a lot of afternoon performances to accommodate them. The Korean shows, though, have the youngest audience in the world. They’re a different kind of vibe. In Europe, you get a little of both.
There are certain titles like Cyrano or Scarlet Pimpernel or Monte Cristo. Those are kind of meat and potatoes to the older audience. But these days, there are producers who want more things like Death Note, because they know they need to develop their younger audiences so the theater business doesn’t die out.
The goal for me is always international; I’m never writing a local show. I’m always thinking, “How can this story be told in other languages and other cultures?” But it’s vital that I listen to the producers for each market. They know their audiences better than I do, and what’s right for them. A show has to be a hit locally first, because if it’s not, it won’t happen anywhere else.
I write a lot about Broadway replica productions that look alike all over the world, but your shows really vary significantly from country to country and producer to producer.
The way violence is treated, or religion is treated, or sex is treated, that changes drastically from country to country. The first time we did Jekyll in Japan, the song “Dangerous Game” was a little more vanilla than I would have liked it to be, but then, when Hyde killed Lucy, he did it in a white room, and she’s bleeding, and then the bed starts bleeding, and then the walls start bleeding. They shied away a little from the sex but really went for violence. But then in Prague, the actress who played Lucy, when Hyde ties her to the bed she would say, “He’s not tying me hard enough. If he ties me tighter, I can really play this.” They really leaned into the bondage.
I don’t make anybody do any of my shows the same way. I trust the artists and the producers I’m working with. So maybe a producer says to me, “We can sit longer than American audiences can, and we like these two songs from the concept album that aren’t in the show. Can you find a way to put them back in?” The answer is always yes. They know more about their market than I do. There are very few of the same productions of any of my shows anywhere. It’s all jazz to me. I’m not interested in doing cookie cutters of all my shows. I want every one of them to have their own personality.
The Man Who Laughs, Seoul, 2022. Courtesy of EMK Musical Company.
THE WILDHORN DOSSIER
THE FREQUENT COLLABORATORS
Don Black (lyricist)
Alexander Dinelaris (book writer)
Carly Robyn Green and Tracy Miller (lyricists)
Rinne B. Groff (book writer)
Christopher Hampton (book writer)
Jason Howland (orchestrator, arranger, music director, conductor)
Nan Knighton (lyricist, book writer)
Robin Lerner (lyricist)
Ivan Menchell (book writer)
Jack Murphy (lyricist, book writer)
Kim Scharnberg (orchestrator)
Koen Schoots (orchestrator, arranger, conductor)
THE PRODUCERS WHO LOVE HIS WORK
Korea: EMK and OD Company, Seoul
Japan: Toho, HoriPro and Takarazuka Revue, Tokyo
China: RanSpace, Shanghai
U.K.: CDM Productions, Indie Theatrical, Haley Swindal and Pinnacle Productions and Lambert Jackson Productions, London
Switzerland: Theater St. Gallen, St. Gallen
Czech Republic: Karlin Musical Theater, Prague
Austria: Vereinigten Bühnen Wien (VBW), Vienna
THE COMMISSIONS ON HIS PIANO
Einstein for Konzert und Theater St. Gallen, a world premiere with Gil Mehmert (book writer, director) and Frank Ramond (lyricist) Winter 2025
DaVinci/Michelangelo for OD Company
Kane and Abel (based on the Jeffrey Archer novel) for Toho Winter 2025
Kung Fu Masters (about Bruce Lee and Ip Man) for Joyway, China
two musical adaptations of manga stories, titles under wraps, one for HoriPro and one for EMK
a new version of Jekyll & Hyde, workshopped by Lambert Jackson Productions, with book by Alexander Dinelaris (also attached as director to a developing film adaptation of the musical)
orchestral work “Donau Symphony/Danube Symphony,” which the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (performed) in July 2024
2nd orchestral work to be recorded and performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and more…
Your Lie in April, Tokyo, 2022. Courtesy of Toho.
THE OUTLOOK AND THE ADVICE
What’s your take on the state of the international theater market right now?
Things are very different in Europe right now than they are in Asia. COVID really took a bite out of things in Europe, and the theaters suffered. Audiences are starting to come back, but slowly. Whereas in Asia, when the green light was given for theater to start up again, it was the Wild West. They couldn’t do it fast enough, and at the same time a lot of younger producers stepped forward and took control of the industry there. It’s growing. It’s a giant beast that needs content.
What new directions is your career heading these days?
I think we’re just at the very beginning of this next phase, which is: We’ve had success and created and licensed shows within Asia. Now let’s start bringing these shows to the West.
I think Death Note and then Your Lie in April are going to be our one-two punch, bringing them in to London and New York. I really feel good about that.
What advice do you have for younger theatermakers looking to work internationally?
There can be such an attitude about theater, especially in New York sometimes, where people love to put labels on things. It’s starting to get more open. In Asia, because the industry there is so much younger, their idea of musical theater doesn’t start with Rodgers and Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. It starts with Cats and Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. And so their idea of musical theater singing is a more contemporary, popular style. And then of course Europe is a whole different thing unto itself, because of the influence there of classical music and opera. So one thing I would tell people is that you can’t say theater is only one thing. Theater is whatever it is that works for an audience of 1,000 people every night.
1 Freddie Gershon is the longtime head of Music Theater International, one of the biggest and most active theatrical licensing companies in the world.
2 The Broadway runs of Jekyll & Hyde (April 1997-Jan. 2001), The Scarlet Pimpernel (Nov. 1997-Jan. 2000) and The Civil War (April 1999-June 1999) all overlapped in 1999.
3 Wildhorn launched his career writing pop tunes for music publishers, during which time he wrote songs recorded by a number of prominent artists. His song “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” was a hit for Whitney Houston.
Check out Gordon Cox’s Bestselling Substack Jaques for a deep dive into the International theatre business