When “Schmigadoon!” first premiered as a streaming series on Apple TV+, it brought a burst of musical-theater nostalgia to our home screens. But series co-creator Cinco Paul said that he had initially intended for “Schmigadoon!” to be a stage musical, which makes sense given that it draws inspiration from about a dozen classics of the musical-theater canon. And while “Schmigadoon!” references Golden Age musicals like “Oklahoma!,” “Brigadoon,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Music Man” (to name a few), it isn’t a direct parody of any of them.
The score contains nods to Meredith Willson’s rhythms and Richard Rodgers’ melodies, but every song is an original composition. “I didn’t want to write parodies. I wanted to write songs that are as if this was an undiscovered Rodgers and Hammerstein musical,” Paul told Broadway News. “So it’s sort of satirical pastiche, I’d call it. And I’ve tried to be rigorous about it.”
“I played through all of those scores on the piano before I started writing the songs [of “Schmigadoon!”] to get them in my bones,” Paul continued. “I studied Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics and just people’s tendencies. You want to emulate that instead of being a direct correlation to any specific song.”
In terms of the book, Paul’s structure takes from storytelling conventions of these 20th-century musicals — be it character archetypes in the cast list, the usage of second chances in the plot or scene changes with incidental music in the script. (“There’s an in-one scene!” exclaimed director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli, referring to the old device of a scene taking place in front of the curtain during a set change.) And yet, “Schmigadoon!” is a present-day love story placed in a provincial town, where it just happens to be a musical every day.
As its story goes: Josh and Melissa have been together for years, but their relationship is on the rocks. They embark on a couples’ retreat and end up lost and fighting in the woods when, suddenly, the sunny town of Schmigadoon comes into view. When the two try to leave Schmigadoon, they learn that the only way out is to find their true love.
To that end, Paul crafted characters who live in Schmigadoon as combinations of archetypes that would best serve Josh and Melissa. “I was thinking mostly from Josh and Melissa’s point of view,” Paul said. “Their first flings are with two tropes: the Lusty Farmer’s Daughter and the Town Bad Boy, right? Which is Billy Bigelow and Ado Annie — those tropes.”
“But then for the next relationships, I wanted it to be a little more serious, have a little more depth,” Paul continued. “So then we have Marian Paroo [from ‘The Music Man’] and Anna from ‘King and I,’ and then Doc, played by Ivan Hernandez, is kind of the Captain from ‘Sound of Music’ and the King from ‘King and I.’ It was viewing it through the lens of: [Who] is going to teach Josh and Melissa the lessons that they need to learn?”
