Travel Back to the 60's with a Sneak Peek of MY VERY OWN BRITISH INVASION!

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Up next at Paper Mill Playhouse is the world premiere of my very own British Invasion, a musical fable of rock and roll, which features a book by Tony Award winner Rick Ellis and is directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell

It'll begin performances on January 31st, and we drop by the rehearsal room to meet the company, bring you a sneak peek, and to talk to the rock legend himself, Peter Noon

What does this all mean to you, this show

Well, first of all, I love that it's reuniting us with Jerry Mitchell, who did Halftime for us last year

and also was my mentor as a performer. He was a dance captain on Jerome Robbins when I was there

So we've known each other for years and brought a whole new family of people in, Rick Ellis to our theater and our commercial producing partners

But bigger than all that is the project itself. And this musical telling of the story of Peter Noon and the British invasion

and how this music that is so a part of our lives now really came over from the UK in the 60s and 70s

And it a fascinating fascinating story and hinges on this love triangle which is thrilling So I John Lennon in the show And the conceit of the show is that we all club goers in the bag of nails

who are then doing a reenactment of the things that happened in the 60s. So it kind of lets me off the hook as far as exact mimicry of John Lennon

But I have to capture the essence of John Lennon, essentially. How cool is it singing like Beatles songs and stuff

It's such a blast because it's the stuff that I grew up on. It's the stuff that made me want to write and sing music

and to be able to bring that to life and show people at least some of what happened

behind the curtain at that time to bring those songs to the US and everything

Yeah, it's really an honor to be able to bring those to life in this way

So you two just sort of met today, right? Well, I've seen him working

but we've never actually spoken to each other because I've just watched him in the play

sneaking in to watch him do his version of me. Brilliant. he's a brilliant young man

I'm quite impressed I believed him I believed he was Peter Noon for a bit there

oh no way that's very kind yeah it's pretty crazy to think that this is

the first time with us meeting after you know labs and working on it

for so long but it's a pleasure you know this man's a hero and not only to this story

but to the 60s and to rock and roll and so you know it's a real pleasure to find me

there's loads of good songs to sing in there you do a good job singing them man I was impressed

I feel like you sing it better than me So listen very carefully

Close now and you will see what I mean It isn a dream The only sound that you hear Is when I whisper You know it was like four and a half years ago that Jerry Mitchell said

come over, I want you to meet somebody, and I showed up and Peter Noon was sitting there. It was pretty remarkable because unlike this one, I am so old that I remembered Peter Noon and buying his records and watching him on Ed Sullivan and all of that

So it was pretty extraordinary. It never gets old when you meet a legend

Here's the thing. This is the perfect show for Jerry. Because Jerry, and you know, we've missed it the last couple of days, but Jerry's energy is so positive and so nurturing

And it's a family. You form a family when you work for Jerry Mitchell

That's how it is And this show, the music you were talking about

It's so amazing I've learned so many new songs that I didn't know from this era

So true My family, my parents are so excited They grew up with this music

And I'm excited to share it with the younger people in my family too Because I think it's going to introduce the younger generation

To a whole lot of these songs It's an epic love story told with iconic music

So it's timeless My character is based off of a lot of the English birds of the time

and so I've used a lot of people in my rehearsal process and research to kind of take from

you know, we've got Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, we got you know all the birds of the time The story in the Love Triangle is loosely based on the experiences of Peter Noon at a club in the 60s called The Bag of Nails which actually still exists

And similarly to Erica, my character is sort of loosely based on those slimy, snaky, sexy rock stars of the time

You know, everyone from David Bowie to Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger. Yeah, trying to soak up as much of all that special sauce as I can

Yeah, something that's so great, Rick has written these roles for us that are just so incredibly unique and full

And for a love triangle, you've got these three characters and you are all rooting for each character at a certain time

And not one of them is all good or all bad, it's human