In May, San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater will stage an original musical based on Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" series about Ms. Singleton and her community of colorful outcasts. The show features heavyweight talent including writing and direction from the duo behind Tony-winning "Avenue Q" and music by members of the electro-pop band Scissor Sisters. Producers say they hope the $2.2 million production could eventually travel to other cities or even Broadway, but don't have any current plans.
As the artistic team makes final tweaks in advance of rehearsals set for April, the show faces a number of creative challenges. It is difficult to predict how audiences will respond to having well-known nonmusical material transformed into a musical stage production. Also, the two books upon which the musical is based contain many characters and intertwined plot lines, making the adaptation complicated. And the show's creators need to be able to capture the carefree mood of a story set in the 1970s without oversentimentalizing the era.
"Nostalgia is always a danger in a period piece," said director Jason Moore, who directed "Avenue Q" and "Shrek the Musical" on Broadway. The question is, "how do you make the period feel relevant" today?"
Mr. Maupin's original "Tales" paints an eccentric portrait of San Francisco involving Ms. Singleton's mysterious marijuana-growing landlady, Anna Madrigal, who exposed her new tenant to a city built on tolerance and filled with disco dancing and drug use.
The musical version will contain all of those elements, along with polyester clothes and big hair. But the show will focus on what it felt like to be in that time and place, rather than what might be "archaeologically accurate," Mr. Moore said.
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