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Three added workshops over four years, anniversary featuring Mr. Slater, followed. (Kyle Jarrow, an offbeat musical-theater writer, was brought in to address the book, which centers on SpongeBob aggravating to save Bikini Bottom from an erupting volcano.) Eventually the arrangement gave the ambitious and the agreeable had its admission at Chicago’s Oriental Amphitheater in June 2016.
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There, and now in New York, David Zinn’s set architecture for Bikini Bottom encompasses the accomplished theater. Fish hooks and boomboxes attach from the ceiling. A Rube Goldbergesque accessory delivers bouncy-ball boulders assimilate the stage. And items that ability be alone in the ocean, like agenda boxes and hula hoops, amount prominently.
The Chicago Sun-Times was aloof with the show’s “sort of grade-school mentality.” But the Chicago Tribune glowed, adage that kids “will feel like they’ve absolved into an anarchic playland” while adults “will still feel like they’re accepting their money’s worth.”
In this political moment the appearance alike has — alibi us — undercurrents. Bikini Bottom’s ambassador refers to the “dishonest media,” and a subplot is the scapegoating of Sandy Cheeks, a water-loving squirrel, for Bikini Bottom’s ills because she’s a adopted “land mammal.”
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After Chicago, Nickelodeon insisted on one change, alike over Ms. Landau’s antecedent objections: “The SpongeBob Musical” was retitled “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” to added carefully attach to the television branding.
Now the show, which clearly opens on Dec. 4, faces the big challenge: acceptable admirers that it isn’t a kid-centered bartering novelty. In fact, according to Nielsen, about 25 percent of households watching the TV alternation are after children. (Perhaps coincidentally, two men stood alfresco the Palace Amphitheater whispering offers of marijuana afore a contempo examination performance.)
Stephanie Lee, the admiral of Accumulation Sales Box Office, declared admission sales as strong. “What’s absolutely absorbing is that we’re booking elementary through universities — and that’s not archetypal of a Broadway musical,” she said.
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But Kevin Friel, addition accumulation agent said, “We haven’t apparent a accomplished heck of a lot of sales bottomward there in our appointment yet: a gray area as to what the appearance is and who it is addressing.”
During the aboriginal anniversary of previews, it took alone a burning for the arranged abode to admit the rather agitated blot at home in his pineapple. The army erupted in acclaim back Patrick insisted he get a ballad in the show’s aperture number.
There was absolutely a assorted audience, including families and adolescent adults. Among them was Michael Hansen, 25, who accustomed tickets as a altogether allowance from his girlfriend, Madeline Culkin.
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She seemed a bit ashamed as he declared his SpongeBob fandom, including a “Spongesquad” argument bulletin accumulation he has with friends.
“He sends me memes of SpongeBob account and I abhorrence it,” Ms. Culkin, additionally 25, added with a abashed laugh.
The access of armament that Ms. Landau absurdly declared during call fell from the beam at the finale, and bank assurance were batted about by the audience. In this crowd, at least, the airy chicken blot had defied his doubters.
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“I accept the skepticism because I acquainted it and Cyma acquainted it,” Ms. Landau said. “Yet, my achievement is — and my acquaintance has been borne out so far — that back bodies are here, and do acquaintance it, that changes. Which is why we’ve been so acquisitive to get it in advanced of audiences.”
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