David Byrne & Fatboy Slim’s Hit Off-Broadway Musical Here Lies Love Begins Seattle Run; Is Broadway Next?

Is Here Lies Love, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s immersive Imelda Marcos bio-musical, eyeing a return to the New York stage? The show begins performances on April 7 at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and it looks like updates to the show's design means Here Lies Love is looking to the future. Tony nominee Alex Timbers repeats his duties as director of the musical that has been circling Broadway since its downtown premiere.

In an interview with American Theatre magazine, set designer David Korins, a Tony nominee for Broadway hit Hamilton, stated his hope for the future of Here Lies Love now that it is being presented in a proscenium house. “Now that we’ve cracked that code, I have high hopes it could find its way back to New York in a proscenium, eventually a Broadway venue.”

A challenge in moving the show to a Broadway house from the Public Theater's open-space LuEsther Hall, where Here Lies Love played a pair of runs in 2013 and 2014, was the innovative framework Korins developed for the piece. The set included movable platforms around which the standing audience could maneuver as the show played. Most Broadway theaters feature a traditional proscenium (the arch that separates a stage from the auditorium), which presumably would not fit the overall storytelling devices within the design for Here Lies Love.

For the Seattle run, the production and design team developed a solution to present the musical in their more traditional space. The dance floor will be located on the stage of Seattle Rep’s Bagley Wright Theatre, and audience members will be seated either onstage or in one of two mezzanine-like spaces above.

The Seattle Rep run of Here Lies Love features off-Broadway stars Conrad Ricamora as Aquino and Jaygee Macapugay as Imelda Marcos, who took over for original star Ruthie Ann Miles at the Public. The production runs through May 28.