Tony nominee Dick Scanlan (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Everyday Rapture) will direct a North American tour of An Officer and a Gentleman, based on the 1982 Oscar-winning film starring Richard Gere and Debra Winger.
The tour, which will launch in fall 2020, will feature choreography by Patricia Wilcox (Motown, A Night with Janis Joplin). Casting will be announced at a later date.
Based on the original screenplay by Douglas Day Stewart, An Officer and a Gentleman will feature a book by Scanlan, based on an original book by Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen. Dan Lipton (The Band’s Visit, The Last Ship) serves as the music supervisor and arranger, and George Dyer provides orchestrations and arrangements for the score, featuring songs from the 1980s. The movie spawned the Grammy-winning hit “Up Where We Belong.”
“Like all good stories, An Officer and a Gentleman is set in a specific world with its own culture, customs, and costumes—the U.S. Navy,” said Scanlan in a statement. “And like all great stories, its themes are universal: love, valor, and the ways in which our reasons for pursuing a dream determine whether or not we’ll achieve it.”
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The musical concerns Zack Mayo, who is in the U.S. Navy pilot boot camp, where a sergeant is determined to drill his arrogance out of him. Zack finds comfort in the arms of a local factory girl, but it isn’t until tragedy befalls a fellow candidate that Zack learns the importance of love and friendship and finds the courage to be his best self and win the heart of the woman he loves.
The tour is produced by Work Light Productions in association with Jamie Wilson, Curve, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros.
The first musical of An Officer and a Gentleman, adapted by Oscar nominee Stewart, premiered in Sydney in 2012. Simon Phillips directed. Check out photos from that production below:
