Hey, All You Cool Cats and Kittens! Broadway Is as Obsessed with Tiger King as Everyone Else
(Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Broadway has no problem making musicals out of shady characters. Women who murder their husbands? Give them jazz hands in Chicago! Londoners who murder people and bake them into pies? Sweeney Todd made them sing. So, perhaps it’s no surprise Broadway artists are currently obsessed with the Netflix documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
Tiger King's characters seem tailor made for a musical: Joe Exotic (whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage) is a flamboyant owner of an exotic animal zoo who also sings country music and orders a hit on his rival, Carole Baskin, who knows how to wear a flower crown and who may or may not have fed her ex-husband to tigers. From Cats to The Lion King, Broadway is well-equipped to handle felines on stage.
The series, and its exploration of the underground world of large cat ownership, has gripped some Broadway artists, who seem to be spending their time inside dreaming about what a Tiger King musical would look and sound like. Over the weekend, composer Andrew Lippa tweeted: “I’m making the musical of Tiger King. Don’t try to stop me. Don’t tell me you have the rights. You don’t. I will crush it. Bigger than Cats. Promise.”
Lippa then previewed some of the songs he might write for the musical, including: “‘Tiger Love,’ ‘No Cage Big Enough (To Hold This Prince Albert)’; ‘Big Cat, Small Cat, Anywhere At All Cat’; and that international sensation ‘Spats, Stripes, and Clorox Wipes’ (very of the moment).” Follow along on Lippa’s Twitter account for more aspirational casting and song lyrics. (Here’s the one for “Tiger Love:” There’s a cat out there in the distance / And it’s calling me with its mewl / And I hear it say in the distance / You fool / You fool / There’s a woman there in the distance / And she’s working hard against you / So now you know what you must go and do / Tiger Love!)
It wasn’t long before more of Broadway joined in, with Hadestown’s Patrick Page seemingly offering to play Jeff Lowe, one of the owners of Maldonado-Passage’s zoo and a wanted man in Las Vegas: “Jeff Lowe is a bass, I think.” Betty Buckley, who won a Tony Award for Cats, responded to Lippa’s suggestion of her playing a sheriff in Tiger King with: “Most excellent news of the day!”
Tony-nominated director Alex Timbers—who recently helmed Moulin Rouge! and Beetlejuice—put out his own dream version of Tiger King: The Musical on Instagram, with Steven Pasquale as Joe Exotic and Kerry Butler as Carole Baskin, and featuring songs by Tom Kitt and a book by Bess Wohl. Pasquale responded on Instagram: “I’ve got my Joe Exotic voice down.” Butler joked, “I guess the cat is out of the bag…”
One composer you shouldn’t ask to write the Tiger King musical: Joe Iconis. According to his tweet, he’s not interested. Let’s hope that whoever gets the rights for Tiger King: The Musical will also get the rights to Maldonado-Passage’s country song (which he did not write): “I Saw a Tiger.” Have you been watching Tiger King? Who do you think should don the mullet as Joe Exotic?
P.S. Don’t tell Audra McDonald what Tiger King is about. She still hasn’t seen it.
