Writer-director Cameron Crowe’s Oscar-winning screenplay for AlmostFamous lands pretty much intact in Broadway’s latest pedestrian film-to-stage adaptation
It’s all entertaining enough — and no doubt a particular draw for the nostalgic baby-boomer-plus crowd — but there’s nothing extraordinary in the transformation to the stage. Not even almost.
Drawn to the albums that his older sister Anita gives him, 15-year-old William is inspired to be a rock writer. He gets a gig first with Creem magazine then finds work with Rolling Stone, which allows him to step onto the tour bus of the mid-level rock band Stillwater for the ride of his life. William’s enchantment with the liberated, communal, sexy and sexist world of rock and roll — and all the joys, adventures and aches that come with it — is the heart and soul of the film, and likewise here. But the dramatic beat remains in the constant conflict between home and music, dreams and reality, freedom and responsibility.
But these skillful original songs only tell half the story. We never hear expressed — in a way that only musical theater can do — what this music means to these characters. Instead, at key dramatic moments we get renditions of the hits of the era, notably Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” as a kind of carpool karaoke, Joni Mitchell’s “River” and Yusef Islam’s “The Wind.
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