The Wedding Singer, twenty years later
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#1
Posted: 3/29/26 at 4:58pm
It feels like the 2000s were a blur of highly commercial mid-size musicals that came and went with great rapidity, with only a few of them making a mark in general consciousness. Out of all of them circa that 2006 era, I've always felt like "The Wedding Singer" is the one that should have lasted longer as part of the zeitgeist, but it didn't wind up with quite the same legs that Legally Blonde had.
Maybe it's the heavier male to female casting ratio, plus the whole "your three lead characters are musicians who (hopefully) actually have to play onstage" that made it harder to cast. But the songs are great, the lyrics are really clever, and there's nothing especially problematic about it. (The scene and song where the two straight guys in the band are seemingly totally oblivious that their hangout is a gay bar is handled without any real cliches or homophobia.) It's too bad we didn't get an Alex Brightman Wedding Singer at Encores or something... he's the type of actor/singer/musician type the role of Robbie was made for. (In a few years, I'd recommend Gaten Matarazzo for the part too.) But out of Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin's three musicals, I'm always going to say that this one may be their least popular, but it's their best by far.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#2
Posted: 3/29/26 at 5:59pm
I think it was also overshadowed by Jersey Boys.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#3
Posted: 3/29/26 at 6:16pm
Our community theater just put this on a few weeks ago – it was a total delight. Fond memories of seeing this on Broadway back in 2006!
Broadway Star Joined: 8/11/05
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#4
Posted: 3/29/26 at 6:21pm
Oh, how I love The Wedding Singer! I'd love to see it at Encores - the score is full of bangers!
I wonder if it could be revived with a Rock of Ages-size cast?
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#5
Posted: 3/29/26 at 6:25pm
I was shocked how much I loved it when I saw it at a summer stock a few years back. I went into it really reluctantly
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#6
Posted: 3/29/26 at 6:33pm
Stephen Lynch was also great in the show. It's a pity he didn't do more theatre after; I know his musical comedy albums haven't exactly aged well in the woke 2020s, but they were absolute staples of me and the rest of the theatre kids/class clowns in the class of '08.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#7
Posted: 3/29/26 at 6:58pm
I remember seeing it for the first time on The Tonys that year with that absolute ear worm of a song. It's a show that never really got Its flowers on Broadway, but I'm glad it's had a healthy regional life.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#8
Posted: 3/29/26 at 6:58pm
I saw the first preview (it ran so long) and another with Tina (Laura and Tina were both great). I loved the show it was such a fun time wish it ran longer but the star of the show was Felicia Finley
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#9
Posted: 3/29/26 at 7:53pm
It was a ton of fun. Didn't want to be anything other than that, something I miss nowadays.
"Hey little girls, look at all the men in shiny shirts and no wives!" - Jackie Hoffman, Xanadu, 19 Feb 2008
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#10
Posted: 3/29/26 at 8:09pm
“Let Me Come Home” is still one of my most listened to songs of all time.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#11
Posted: 3/29/26 at 8:16pm
Let Me Come Home is great, and I still think it’s one of the two worst songs in the show. That’s how overall solid I think that score is.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#12
Posted: 3/29/26 at 8:19pm
The original production was one of the first Broadway shows I ever saw when I was a sophomore in high school and I later saw the tour when it swung through my town a couple years later. It’s really just a show that aims to give you some charming, kitschy 80s fun and yknow what, it succeeds at that in spades. It sets the target kind of low for itself but then hits a bullseye. Considering the number of musicals we’ve had since that can’t even manage that, there’s something to be said for a show that knows exactly what it is, what it needs to do to succeed, and then does it.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#13
Posted: 3/29/26 at 8:37pm
This is the thread where I learned I'm the same age as Kad and darquegk, I always assume the literate longtime posters I still enjoy reading have been around Broadway for a couple more decades lol.
Stephen Lynch big for me and my nerdy friends too, I shudder to think about how The Craig Machine would hold up today.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#14
Posted: 3/29/26 at 8:44pm
Scarywarhol said: "This is the thread where I learned I'm the same age as Kad and darquegk, I always assume the literate longtime posters I still enjoy reading have been around Broadway fora couple more decades lol."
To be perfectly honest with you- I thought you had some years on me! But I guess we're from the generation that had to take computer and typing classes.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#15
Posted: 3/29/26 at 8:54pm
Judging from the score alone, this has an absolute banger of an opening number, but it kinda tapers off after that IMO.
Fun, safe, could make for a decent Encores revival.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#16
Posted: 3/29/26 at 9:04pm
I really liked this show.
I’m pretty sure Stephen Lynch said he hated doing the same show 8 times a week. Laura Benanti considered herself completely miscast. And I am surprised we don’t see Amy Spanger around. She shows up on my Tik tok feed every so often doing self tapes.
This does seem like the perfect show for Alex Brightman (and I’m not the biggest fan, don’t hate him, just maybe I’ve had too much). Who else could you see in the show if it were cast today?
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#17
Posted: 3/29/26 at 9:08pm
^ definitely a John Behlmann or Drew Gehling type!
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#18
Posted: 3/29/26 at 9:15pm
Great show, ripe for a revival. Amazing score, the best of the 2000s movie to musicals.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#19
Posted: 3/29/26 at 9:45pm
It would almost have to be a star vehicle, since despite the show being "pretty-good-bordering-on-great" it isn't a name, and it's better than the somewhat disposable Adam Sandler movie it's based on. But then you need an actor who can act, sing, play guitar, do believable stand-up, and thread the needle of "adorkable" to "genuinely disturbingly unhinged." If he's too much of a sad sack and doesn't go absolutely feral during his binge-drinking/meltdown in Act 1, it doesn't work. Robbie Hart is not Pippin, and you can't just drop a heartthrob type in since the comedy is as central as the romance. (The ultimate Robbie Hart candidate is unfortunately too big to do a cult romcom revival on Broadway: Joe Keery.)
In my time as a producer, I was talking to a large company that had built a reputation developing and premiering cabaret/chamber sized versions of larger shows that often go unproduced. The two "big shows that feel small" I recommended looking at were The Full Monty and The Wedding Singer, both of which feel like they'd do better in a tiny cast, small band version.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#21
Posted: 3/29/26 at 9:53pm
Kad said: "Scarywarhol said: "This is the thread where I learned I'm the same age as Kad and darquegk, I always assume the literate longtime posters I still enjoy reading have been around Broadway fora couple more decades lol."
To be perfectly honest with you- I thought you had some years on me! But I guess we're from the generation that had to take computer and typing classes."
It was in my case a time when sensitive boys of theatrical interest might still be influenced by lunch hours in the library poring over Burns Mantle Best Plays volumes of the 20s to the 80s. I think I probably started posting at 14 trying to do an impression of what I thought people who wrote about theater sounded like, and I think those neurons are still firing when I log on here. I'm sure the right therapist could draw out something about why I still post here and keep that alive.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#22
Posted: 3/29/26 at 10:07pm
Similar (sensitive but straight) anecdote: they had a bunch of copies of the "year's best plays" paperbacks in my high school theatre company's below-the-stage office, which led to the trap door. I was in charge of the Beast's fake butt and hunchback (well, technically Maurice's, since he was the stunt double Beast for the death scenes), so other than my two scenes in Act 2 as Monsieur D'arque, I would sit under the stage reading those and waiting to strap the prosthetics to Maurice.
I almost missed my cues one night, trying as hard as I could to understand what the hell was going on in Steve Martin's "WASP." I directed the play a few years later, in an attempt to figure it out. Still didn't work.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#23
Posted: 3/29/26 at 10:31pm
I didn't see the original production live but I have seen a bootleg and other live productions since.
I used to say it was a guilty pleasure but I don't think I have any guilt about it. It's a really good show - a funny script and one of the sneaky best scores of the 2000s. Songs that are complete earworms but also advancing the plot and character development.
I think it gets done a fair amount regionally and at colleges still but would probably be a more of a high school staple like Legally Blonde if it was a little more PG and a little easier to cast.
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/7/12
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#24
Posted: 3/29/26 at 10:41pm
I know multiple people who have been in various community/regional productions of this show, and they each say that it’s some of the most fun they’ve ever had doing a show. I wouldn’t mind at all to see it brought back to NYC in some form.
The Wedding Singer, twenty years later#25
Posted: 3/29/26 at 10:56pm
In an alternate universe, this is the eighties pop musical revival Aaron Tveit and Lea Michele are starring in, even though she’s much more right for it than he is.
Julia has to have a bit of the same energy Robbie does, where she’s cute and lovable but genuinely a LITTLE bit crazy in that Elaine Benes way. It’s not even a hard sing compared to Holly- you could probably cast an actress-who-sings and not suffer much for it.
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