Preview performances will begin Friday evening for a new musical based on director Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film, “Almost Famous.”

The musical, like the film follows a teenage journalist for “Rolling Stone” in the 1970s who tours with the fictional rock band Stillwater. Both the musical and the movie are quasi-autobiographical as Crowe, a San Diego native, toured with bands like Led Zeppelin and the Eagles during the 1970s as a teenage journalist for “Rolling Stone.”

The musical also name-drops the Old Globe Theatre, which Crowe used to attend as a child, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in April.

Crowe and Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Tom Kitt co-wrote the musical’s lyrics together, according to the Old Globe. The musical is directed by Jeremy Herrin, who was nominated for a Tony Award in 2015 for his direction of “Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2.”

“Cameron Crowe, Tom Kitt and Jeremy Herrin have assembled a group of actors blessed with extraordinary talent and incendiary energy, and together they will transform a beloved movie — which is also, of course, a local San Diego tale — into an unforgettable new work for the American stage,” said Barry Edelstein, the Old Globe’s artistic director.

The theater will host 11 preview performances over two weeks before the opening night performance Sept. 27. The musical is set to run through Oct. 20. Tickets can be purchased at theoldglobe.org/pdp/19-20-season/almost-famous.

–City News Service

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