Fire Up the VW: Little Miss Sunshine: The Musical is Coming

Broadwayworld.com (what? We like to keep up with Idina Menzel's career) is reporting that Little Miss Sunshine is currently being workshopped at the Sundance Institute's showtune-incubating theater lab at White Oak, FL. And some pedigreed talents are behind the show: Composer/lyricist William Finn (Falsettoland) is writing the songs and James Lapine, who wrote the books for Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, will do the same for Sunshine.

The goofily endearing story of a family of misfits who pile into an egg-yolk-yellow VW minivan and make the trek from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach so that their chubby, square-peg daughter can compete in a kiddie beauty queen pageant is actually something of a no-brainer for adaptation; its themes of underdog comeuppance, showbiz aspirations and dysfunctional family dynamics echo Broadway classics like Gypsy. Of course, regardless of how it pans out, this only brings us one step closer to the blockbuster inevitability that is Precious: The Broadway Musical Based on the Movie Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, and its heart-wrenching breakout melody, "He Give Me His Baby (and My One Before It)."

Here's the showstopper of the original Little Miss Sunshine (in German, for copyright reasons too complex to go into here).

· Sunance [sic] Institute Theatre Lab to Workshop Adaptations of 'Little Miss Sunshine,' 'Like Water for Chocolate' [Broadway World]