Credit: Bryan Adams
Pretty Woman: The Musical, based on the hit Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie, just opened on Broadway, with songs written by Bryan Adams and longtime songwriting partner Jim Vallance. It’s already broken box office records, which Adams says he never expected.
“I just hoped that people would like the music, and I thought that they would respond to the songs and the characters,” he tells ABC Radio. “And hopefully, that the word of mouth would spread. And it seems to be doing exactly what I had hoped it would do.”
A while back, Bryan approached the studio that owns the rights to Pretty Woman with the idea of a musical, but was told “no.” But several years later, he heard it was being made after all, so he and Vallance “auditioned” by writing a bunch of songs on spec — and got the job.
Adams calls writing for Broadway “sort of the composer Holy Grail.”
“First of all, if you can even break into that world and create something around a story, you’ve done very well,” he notes. “To have a hit with it is not really conceivable….but so far so good!”
The show is very faithful to the movie — it’s still the story of a prostitute who’s hired by a billionaire — so Adams suggests leaving the kids at home.
“I would say it’s not for very young children,” he notes. “I mean, this is not Aladdin, okay? It’s a mature story. Teenagers, fine…it’s not gratuitous.”
Meanwhile, don’t expect Bryan, who can’t dance or act, to appear in the show, like Sara Bareilles and Sting have done in their Broadway musicals.
“If I walked onstage, it’d be like a fire drill,” he laughs. “People would be heading for the exits!”
The Pretty Woman cast album is out September 21.
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