Gavin Lee, Nick Blaemire & More Tapped for Broadway-Aimed The SpongeBob Musical

Gavin Lee, Nick Blaemire, Danny Skinner and more are off to the city of Bikini Bottom! They will join the previously reported Ethan Slater and Lilli Cooper in the Broadway-aimed The SpongeBob Musical. Co-conceived and directed by Tina Landau, with a book by Kyle Jarrow and music supervision by Tom Kitt, the production will make its world premiere on June 7 at Broadway in Chicago's Oriental Theatre.

Joining the newly announced Lee (Les Miz, Mary Poppins) as Squidward, Blaemire (Glory Days, Godspell) as Plankton and Skinner (Pluck the Day) as Patrick in the cast will be ensemble members Juliane Godfrey, Jesse JP Johnson, Lauralyn McClelland and Allan K. Washington.

The end is near. Only one sponge can save the day. But he's going to need help from some of the greatest songwriters in rock and pop music history. Along with original tunes by David Bowie and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, the musical event will include songs by Jonathan Coulton, Dirty Projectors, The Flaming Lips, John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper, Panic! At the Disco, Plain White T’s, They Might Be Giants and T.I.

The characters will be human and are not set to don puppet type outfits as seen in Times Square. "The DNA is the same but the form is so radically different, we’re not approaching it literally," Landau told EW. "We’re not trying to take the cartoon and put it onstage. We’re trying to create a live theatrical event.”

Other names additionally already slated for the show include Gaelen Gilliland, Curtis Holbrook, Stephanie Hsu, L’ogan J’ones, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Mark Ledbetter, Kelvin Moon Loh, Vasthy Mompoint, JC Schuster, Abby C. Smith and Jason Michael Snow.