A new musical adaptation of Rick Riordan's novel The Lightning Thief "will be hoping to steal hearts Off Broadway this spring featuring rising stage star Chris McCarrell," the Associated Press reported. McCarrell, who has appeared as Marius in the recent Broadway revival of Les Miserables as well as Nibs in Peter Pan Live!, will play Percy Jackson.
"It's really going to push the envelope of (the) magic of theater. The world is so epic and it is so grand and it doesn't seem like you could portray that onstage, but that's really where the magic of theater comes in," said McCarrell. "When musicals are written for the sake of musicals, sometimes the world isn't fleshed out completely. So I really enjoy when behind that two-hour world there is this universe of hours of reading and hours of characters and movies and books and series. I always love when there's a universe behind the musical."
Written by Joe Tracz (Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Rob Rokicki (the musical Strange Tails), the production begins at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in March. The Lightning Thief was previously adapted into a motion picture franchise and a graphic novel. In 2014, "it was turned into a one-hour musical by Theatreworks USA, but this new version runs into two acts, has a larger cast and will have a live band onstage," the AP noted.