If you saw the performance of Rogers: The Musical featured in the Marvel series Hawkeye and thought, “I’d really like to see that in real life,” your prayers have been answered. A real-life version of the fictional musical is coming to Disneyland Resort this summer for a limited time.
A brief, one-act version of the play will appear at California Adventure Park on the infamous Hyperion Stage, according to Marvel. Disney released a little teaser as well, with someone looking suspiciously like Agent Carter walking toward the Hyperion. Take a look:
Rogers: The Musical is a fictitious Broadway play about the life of America’s favorite Avenger (not Hawkeye). In the show, all of the Avengers were invited but only Hawkeye shows up. It really is a treat though. There are actors playing Avengers, singing and saying character-specific things. Oh, and the lyrics are a chef’s kiss. For example:
“The hulk is incredible smashing things up, while Iron Man takes to the skies. Captain America’s strong, and that Thor is a God, and lord knows they’re easy on the eyes!” Even Stephen Sondheim is toe-tapping approval (from the grave)!
Here’s a video with the lion’s share of the performance.
If the music sounds authentically Broadway, that’s because Disney enlisted the award-winning songwriting team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman to write it, the duo behind huge Broadway hits like Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns, and Smash. Shaiman said the reason they ended up writing it was because Marvel Cinematic Universe boss Kevin Feige is a “film score nerd.”
Shaiman said the two songwriters were at a dinner for the Academy Awards when they were tapped on the shoulder and told that Feige wanted to meet them.
“I knew who Kevin was, and I was like he wants to meet me, really? Turns out Kevin is a film score nerd. He started talking about [the scores I’ve written] one by one and I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. We started trading emails about scores and this and that, and when I would see [Marvel movies] I would send him an email. I guess when this idea came up for Hawkeye, for there to be a musical on Broadway, he luckily thought of us, and [Scott and I] couldn’t be more ecstatic about it.”
Both writers said they weren’t really versed in Marvel but Shaiman’s husband Lou was a self-described “Marvel nerd.”
“I would go with him as a good husband to go watch all the movies, then we would usually sit in the parking lot of the movie theater, and I’d say what did I just see? How does that all work and who’s who, and little by little I started putting all the pieces together.”
The exact date for when the musical will begin onsite is as of yet unknown, beyond that it will be running during summer.
