Spice Girls Reunite to Announce a Musical

Ian West/Press Association, via Associated PressThe Spice Girls: from left, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton and Victoria Beckham.

Twenty years ago they were mere wannabes, but now there is going to be a stage musical based on their music and their careers. The Spice Girls, symbols of bubbly mid-’90s dance pop, reunited briefly in London on Tuesday for the announcement of “Viva Forever!,” which is scheduled to open there at the end of the year; according to its creators, it will address the “bitter reality of fame.”

The five Spice Girls have not performed in public together since a reunion tour in 2007 and 2008, and did not appear in character for Tuesday’s event, which was held at the same hotel where the group filmed the video for “Wannabe,” their first big hit, from 1996. That meant no Union Jack dress for Gerri Halliwell, otherwise known as Ginger Spice, though Melanie Brown, a k a Scary Spice, tossed off one of her characteristic wisecracks when she suggested that the cast of “Viva Forever!” would “sing it better than us.”

“Viva Forever!” comes with a strong pedigree. The show is the idea of Judy Craymer, who produced “Mamma Mia!,” based on the music of Abba, which opened in London in 1999 and is still running there. The book is to be written by the comedian Jennifer Saunders, who wrote and performed in the BBC sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous,” and the director will be Paul Garrington, who has worked on “Mamma Mia!” and “Dirty Dancing.”

The show’s producers describe “Viva Forever!” as “the story of a beautiful, talented girl and her best friends who get swept up in the obsession of today’s TV celebrity culture.” The musical “charts her journey into the world of overnight fame and its impact on her relationships with her mother and the friends she thought she’d have forever.”

Though the Spice Girls were a fabricated group brought together by advertisements rather than close friends who grew up together, the story line tracks their experience to some extent. The group sold 75 million records over a period of about five years, its every move tracked by Britain’s tabloid press, before imploding as a result of internal disagreements. Ms. Halliwell left first, to a less than impressive solo career, and Victoria Adams, known as Posh Spice, became a permanent tabloid fixture when she married soccer star David Beckham.

Source & Image : New York Times