'Back to the Future' is back — as a musical on Broadway

Great Scott! After spawning two film sequels, a TV series, and a theme-park ride, "Back to the Future," the 1985 big-screen blockbuster about a teen who time travels in a souped-up DeLorean, is now a Broadway musical. 

On Aug. 3, the show officially opens at the Winter Garden Theatre three years after its premiere in England. Ask the show’s creative team, including its members who worked on the film, and they’ll say it’s always been a story that sings.

“Music is such a big part of the movie,” said the show’s author Bob Gale, who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated 1985 screenplay with director Robert Zemeckis. A key source of music owes to the fact that Marty McFly, the time-tripping teenager, plays guitar and is in a band. “It’s natural that Marty sings,” said Gale.

Another source is Alan Silvestri’s evocative film score. His musical motifs underscoring key moments in the movie inspired songs he and Glen Ballard wrote together for the stage. 

And there are the hit songs from the movie, including “The Power of Love” and “Back in Time,” both made famous by Huey Lewis and the News, and the vintage “Johnny B. Goode” and “Earth Angel.” All are threaded into the musical.

While every adaptation requires a degree of reinvention, the goal of "Back to the Future: The Musical" was to stay true to the movie starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd that became 1985’s highest-grossing film. 

Except for some tweaks — no Libyan terrorists, no dog Einstein — it’s essentially the same sci-fi saga. “We wanted to give people a way to revisit the story they love,” said Gale. That includes the stainless-steel coupe with signature gull-wing doors. 

“The watchword for us,” Gale adds, “was that we don’t do something onstage if the audience is going to say, ‘Oh, that's just a cheap [expletive] version of what they did in the movie.’”

In the film, Marty McFly is an average mid-1980s high school student who gets blasted back 30 years in a time machine dreamed up by his eccentric inventor bestie, Emmett “Doc” Brown.

In 1955, Marty meets his future parents, Lorraine and George. He knows them, but they don’t know him. When Lorraine falls for him instead of George, Marty plays matchmaker to get them together — or he’ll never be born. Meanwhile, Marty has to get back to 1985, where Doc’s life is in danger because of plutonium powering his time-bending contraption.

It’s not the classic boy meets girl setup. Boy meets flux capacitor, which any fan of the movie knows allows time travel when the re-engineered car reaches 88 miles per hour. 

“It’s a really great story for a musical,” said director John Rando, who was born in Islip and lived in Deer Park until his family moved to Texas in 1965. Decades later he won a 2002 Tony Award for "Urinetown." “Our hero has huge mountains to climb. He’s trying to save himself, his family, and his best friend.”

THE 'AHA! MOMENT'

The notion of turning "Back to the Future" into a musical has been in the ether for some 20 years. In 2005, Zemeckis and his wife, Leslie, saw the Broadway musical "The Producers" based on the Mel Brooks movie, according to Gale. She asked him if he ever thought of musicalizing "Back to the Future."

It was an "aha! moment" that got the ball rolling. Zemeckis is credited as a co-creator and producer of the show. Developing a musical is typically a slow-moving process, and it took time to go from concept to stage. 

Gale had never written a musical, but he was game to try. Silvestri, who’s composed music for more than 100 films, and six-time Grammy winner Ballard, whose Broadway credits include "Ghost: The Musical" and "Jagged Little Pill," came on board to write songs together. 

“Glen and I discovered immediately that there were endless ways into this story through music,” said Silvestri. “We just began with some of the iconic moments.” Like Marty with his dysfunctional family.

The show’s double timeline was a sonic guide. “We have the ’80s and the ’50s. It absolutely influenced the tone of the music we were creating for each era,” said Ballard. “The best way to carbon date the time is with music that sounds like it came from that era.”

Silvestri’s film score provided creative juice. “We took Alan’s original main theme and we turned it into a song, ‘It's Only a Matter of Time,’” said Ballard. It was the first show tune they wrote and it establishes the musical’s main theme.

Next came songs to enrich Marty and everyone in his orbit. “We took care to be consistent with the characters that you knew from the movie,” said Silvestri. “For the Dreamers,” Doc’s introspective ballad, “delves deeper” into what makes him tick.

“In cinema, you have this wonderful thing called a close-up,” said Silvestri. “A song can be the equivalent of a close-up in the theater. You can use it to focus attention very narrowly to show something inside a character."

Songs lend layers to all the characters played by a mix of Broadway vets and newcomers. Casey Likes, who made his Broadway debut last year in "Almost Famous," stars as Marty. Roger Bart, a Tony winner for "You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown," plays Doc, as he did in London’s West End. Hugh Coles reprises his London role as George. Liana Hunt plays Lorraine.

FROM THE ENGEMAN TO BROADWAY

Another key cast member is Nathaniel Hackmann, who portrays the bully Biff. He found out he’d snagged the role back in December but couldn’t tell a soul. The news was released in March when the actor was playing another bad guy — he’s played a bunch of them — in "The Scarlet Pimpernel" at the John W. Engeman Theater in Northport.

“Everybody at the theater was very kind, very congratulatory. It was fascinating to go from feeling like I had the secret to all of a sudden everybody wanting to ask me about it,” Hackmann said. “Suddenly it was real.”

Another reality about Back to the Future is that the DeLorean looms extra-large as it zooms from 1985 to 1955 and, eventually, back again. 

Rando, who came aboard the production in 2018 after British director Jamie Lloyd exited the project, left the car in park for a long time. 

“I didn't even want to approach the car and the technical aspect of it until we had what I thought was a really strong musical with a book and score in place,” he said. “I would just have one of the ensemble members wear a shiny jacket and stand in the middle of the stage as the car.”

On Broadway, the actor in the flashy jacket is out, replaced by a tricked-out DeLorean. A team of designers — scenic, lighting, video, illusions, and more — dug deep to create special-effects magic.

“We worked so hard on that,” said Rando. “It was pages and pages and pages of storyboards. It was a fantastic process. That was so much fun.”

Flash-forward to today, and audiences get a similar rush, said Gale. “It blows audiences away.” 

'BACK TO THE FUTURE' IS A STAR VEHICLE FOR THE DELOREAN

Musical theater geeks aren’t the only ones buzzing about "Back to the Future: The Musical" on Broadway. DeLorean devotees are also along for the ride.

Among them is Huntington Station’s Tom Neiland, 55, an electrical engineer, whose wife got him tickets to the show as a Christmas present. Neiland has been a DeLorean fan since they came out in 1981, predating the film. “The car was so different from anything else,” he said.

If uniqueness gave the auto a Hollywood leg up, Neiland knows that the moviemakers also considered turning a refrigerator into a time machine. Fortunately, the distinctive coupe with signature winged doors made the cut.

DeLorean production ceased in December 1982, shortly after scandal-plagued John DeLorean’s company filed for bankruptcy. For Neiland, the car’s “transcendent styling” outshines historical dents. “The movie did a great job of showcasing the car in a positive way,” he said. 

Since 2007, he has “owned four and sold three DeLoreans.” He is a member of The DeLorean Mid-Atlantic Club and co-founder of the Long Island — New York DeLorean Motor Club, which, he said, “has around 40 people on the mailing list.”

In June, the local club had a Cars and Coffee meetup, an informal gathering to gab about their favorite subject at his home. 

The DeLorean in his garage boasts an upgraded engine and transmission and power steering, which didn't come in the original. 

Like clockwork, when he’s taken the car out for a spin and parked or stopped for gas, he’s been asked about his flux capacitor.

Has he ever reached 88 mph while behind the wheel? “I may or may not have,” he said with a laugh. “The original DeLorean speedometer only went to 85.”

— JOE DZIEMANOWICZ