Brokaw & Ashford Sign Up for Cry-Baby Tuner

The creative team for Broadway's next John Waters musical adaptation is shaping up. Broadway.com has learned that Mark Brokaw has signed on as the director of the stage version of Cry-Baby, based on the 1990 Waters film of the same. Tony-winning choreographer Rob Ashford is also on board. Cry-Baby, which is being produced by Adam Epstein, Allan S. Gordon, Elan McAllister and Brian Grazer, is expected to arrive on Broadway in spring 2006, following an out-of-town tryout.

Brokaw is currently represented by Reckless at the Biltmore Theatre, his first production on Broadway. He is best known for his work off-Broadway, including the acclaimed premieres of Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth and Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, which earned him an OBIE Award, a Drama Desk Award and a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director. Other notable credits include Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo's Greatest Hits, The Long Christmas Ride Home, Music from a Sparkling Planet, Lobby Hero, 2.5 Minute Ride, As Bees In Honey Drown, Wake Up, I'm Fat, Avenue X and The Good Times Are Killing Me. He also directed the 2002 premiere of the Broadway-bound musical Marty at the Huntington Theatre in Boston.

Ashford started out as a performer, dancing in the ensemble of several Broadway shows: Anything Goes, The Most Happy Fella, Crazy For You, My Favorite Year and Parade. After working as an assistant to Kathleen Marshall on several productions, Ashford made his debut as choreographer with Thoroughly Modern Millie, which won him the 2002 Tony Award for Best Choreography. Other credits include The Boys from Syracuse on Broadway, Time and Again and The Thing About Men off-Broadway and the regional premiere of Marty, his first collaboration with Brokaw.

As previously announced, composer Adam Schlesinger of the band Fountains of Wayne and lyricist David Javerbaum are collaborating on the Cry-Baby score, with Tony-winning Hairspray librettists Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan reteaming for the book.

Cry-Baby, which gave Johnny Depp his first leading film role, is a send-up of 1950s teenage melodramas. The central character in the film, Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker, is the leader of the gang known as the Drapes, who falls for the clean-cut leader of the appropriately titled Squares, Allison Vernon-Williams.