Sandler comedy takes to stage

Houston Chronicle, United States - Are you ready for the '80s? No, I haven't misplaced my calendar. They're back, courtesy of The Wedding Singer.

The 2006 musical version of the 1998 Adam Sandler film comedy makes its Houston premiere Tuesday at Hobby Center, in the national tour presented by Broadway Across America-Houston.

Set in Ridgefield, N.J., circa 1985, the show centers on Robbie Hart, "New Jersey's leading wedding singer" and a big believer in love and marriage — until his fiancee dumps him at the altar. Robbie starts sabotaging wedding gigs with anti-love ditties and literally winds up not just in the dumps, but in a Dumpster.

Sympathetic reception-hall waitress Julia, with whom he falls in love and who reciprocates the attraction, could put Robbie's life back on track — if she weren't already engaged to a Wall Street go-getter.

The up-and-coming team of composer Matthew Sklar and lyricist Chad Beguelin made their Broadway debut with The Wedding Singer, whose score is as devoted to summoning the show's mid-1980s milieu as it is to portraying the romance between Robbie and Julia.

Awash in pop references, it's not the kind of score the team had written prior to getting this assignment. Yet it came naturally, as both were teens in the '80s and fondly recall the pop sounds and cultural trends the show re-creates with tongue-in-cheek affection. What's more, both liked the original movie and recognized its possibilities as a musical.

Beguelin was pitching a screenplay to New Line Cinema executive Mark Kaufman (who'd been involved in producing the musical of Hairspray), when Kaufman countered by pitching ideas for Beguelin and Sklar to do as stage musicals. Kaufman had heard a demo of Beguelin and Sklar's songs and wanted them to adapt one of New Line's films for Broadway.

"We kept coming back to The Wedding Singer," Beguelin says. "Both Matt and I loved the movie and thought it would be a natural as a musical, since it's about a guy who sings and writes songs. It was a change of pace, since we usually write more traditional shows. But I was in high school in the 1980s, so I knew (that music) and found it a fun time to re-create. That drew us into the piece."