Cast and Crew of Broadway-bound In Your Dreams Salutes Fox News on its 10th Anniversary
Subscribe to this News Feed
Cast and Crew of Broadway-bound “In Your Dreams” Salutes Fox News on its 10th Anniversary
As one underdog to another, America’s hot new teen musical lauds ‘Fox News Sunday’ for pulling no punches in its coverage of current events.
New York, NY — The cast and crew of the hot new teen musical “In Your Dreams” issued a statement today congratulating Fox News on its 10th anniversary.
The news show’s major milestone is acknowledged on Fox News Channel Sunday night at 10 EDT with a behind-the-scenes peek at how it all comes together, plus interviews with FNC chairman Roger Ailes and the show’s panelists, including departing contributor Tony Snow, who has replaced Scott McClellan as White House press secretary.
“Like my musical ‘In Your Dreams,’ ‘Fox News Sunday’ is still the new kid on the block, but it is clearly a player now,” said Zeke Farrow, whose new teen musical is taking on Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” for its share of the $170 billion teen entertainment market.
“Over the years, we have particularly enjoyed the ‘Power Player of the Week’ segment, which features apolitical personalities, including Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs and Placido Domingo,” says Farrow. “And we also enjoy the verbal spats that occasionally erupt between its senior panelist, conservative Brit Hume, and liberal Juan Williams of National Public Radio.”
Although the youngest of the Sunday morning political talk shows, “Fox News Sunday” clearly has currency in the nation’s capital, says Farrow. Although ratings remain calm for Fox News Sunday nationwide, the program ranks No. 2 in power-broking Washington, D.C., outdrawing both CBS’ Face the Nation and ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, he says.
Cast members are also big fans of the departing Tony Snow. “If he were the last tree on earth, we would be his Green Party,” says Farrow, stealing a lyric from his own musical.
Farrow admits that the Fox News format didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. “But by the late 1990s, it was understood that any significant politician who did the big network shows had to do ‘Fox News Sunday’ as well. It’s a tabloid-free zone, which serious viewers appreciate.”
In contrast, Farrow’s own production, the teen musical “In Your Dreams,” is a large-scale, splashy, teen musical –- with just a dash of political satire. And while Fox News Sunday typically centers around anchor Chris Wallace, “In Your Dreams” centers around Helen, a seventeen-year-old girl who appears in three different incarnations: Black, Pink, and Blue.
“Like Fox News, our musical was the underdog when it was first launched,” says Farrow, referring to the huge mainstream success of “In Your Dreams’” main teen musical competitor, Disney Channel’s “High School Musical.” “Disney’s teen musical has to date far overpowered ‘In Your Dreams’ in the lucrative $170 billion teen entertainment marketplace,” says Farrow.
More specifically, Farrow notes, Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” has so far seen 30 million viewers in its 10 airings on that network, and its sound track has just gone triple platinum, selling over 1.6 million copies to hit the No. 4 spot in the Billboard 200 this week. “But I am confident that ‘In Your Dreams’ will eventually reach that same sales peak,” he says. “And as it so aptly says in one of ‘In Your Dreams’ many great songs: ‘Once you’re at the top, you like the view.’ Which I am sure is how the staff of Fox News Sunday feels today on its 10th anniversary.”
Plotwise, “In Your Dreams” opens with the bizarre introduction of Black Helen, a girl tortured by fellow students Melanie and Jordanna and secretly in love with Jared. We quickly learn that Black Helen is but a dream and as she fades and Pink Helen wakes up, we realize that Pink Helen’s life is a perfect, bubble gum musical. She is popular, she’s dating Jared, she has high hopes for a perfect day. And today is the day to beat all days. It is prom, and Helen is a front runner to win prom queen…until she learns that the “Popular Girls Caucus” has turned against her, and is even stuffing the ballot box to engineer her defeat!
“There’s a little bit of political satire in the musical, to keep the older audience intrigued,” admits Farrow.
What is helping to spur the “In Your Dreams Express,” according to Farrow, are its 13 ingeniously lyrical songs, performed by a number of top Broadway singers, including “Trailer Park’s” Drama Desk-nominated Leslie Kritzer, “Wicked’s” Laura Bell Bundy, “Les Miserable’s” Jodie Langel, “Little Shop of Horror’s” Kerry Butler, “Thoroughly Modern Millie’s” Gavin Creel, “Hairspray’s” Jackie Hoffman, “The Full Monty’s” Sloan Just, and Anika Larsen, Danny Rocket and Anthony Rapp from “Rent.” Rhythm and blues artist Shayna Steele is also a contributor.
The stage version of “In Your Dreams” will see a showcase production at Ars Nova, the famed Manhattan performance incubator, later this summer, says Farrow.
Among those in the motion picture industry with a growing awareness of the significant market value that a theater-distributed rival to Disney’s cable-based “High School Musical” has to offer are Joss Wedon; Ryan Kavanaugh of Gun Hill Road; Thomas Tull and Scott Mednick of Legendary Pictures; Oliver Obst; Melrose Investors; Bob Osher; Steve Bing; Jeff Skoll; Tom Jacobson; Nathan Lane; Philip Anshutz; Mark Platt; Elizabeth McCann; Gus Gustawes and Kevin Morris of Just Keep Living; and Sarah Jessica Parker and Vanessa Taylor at Pretty Matches Productions, which is currently producing “The Washingtonienne,” a half-hour comedy about a highly-sexed, low-paid Washington intern who is forced to turn tricks over her lunch hour to make ends meet, for HBO.
But to date the film rights remain unsold. “Ryan Markowitz and Mark Kaufman at New Line Cinema continue to pass, as does Christina Aquilera,” says Farrow. “And the woman at MTV remains vitriolic in her rejection of it.”
(Editor’s Note: A sampling of the songs that can be heard in the musical can be obtained by following the link at the upper right of this release.)