“Ain’t Too Proud — The Life and Times of the Temptations” will run at Broadway’s Imperial Theater, the show’s producers said Thursday; they did not announce a cast or an opening date.
A new musical about the Temptations will open on Broadway next spring, the latest in a series of shows using familiar pop songs to tell stories and lure audiences.
“Ain’t Too Proud — The Life and Times of the Temptations” will run at Broadway’s Imperial Theater, the show’s producers said Thursday; they did not announce a cast or an opening date. The musical will have had four developmental productions before coming to Broadway, starting last year at Berkeley Repertory Theater in California and earlier this year at the Kennedy Center in Washington; it is now playing at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, and is scheduled to run in Toronto this fall.
“Ain’t Too Proud” is directed by Des McAnuff, who directed the long-running Tony-winning hit “Jersey Boys,” which closed last year, and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” which opened this year. There are two other jukebox musicals now running on Broadway — “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” and “Head Over Heels,” featuring songs by the Go-Go’s. Bruce Springsteen is performing a concert show, “Springsteen on Broadway”; “The Cher Show” opens in December; and there are several more jukebox musicals circling Broadway, including “Jagged Little Pill,” featuring songs by Alanis Morissette, and “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” as well as multiple others in development.
“Ain’t Too Proud” features a book by playwright Dominique Morisseau (“Skeleton Crew,” “Pipeline”). Morisseau, like the Temptations, is from Detroit; the show is about the R&B group’s formation, successes and challenges. The lead producers are Ira Pittelman and Tom Hulce, who previously produced the Tony-winning “Spring Awakening”; the pair have told the Securities and Exchange Commission that they will seek to raise $16.75 million to capitalize the new musical.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.