Dude (musical)

Dude
Original Broadway Playbill
Music	Galt MacDermot
Lyrics	Gerome Ragni
Book	Gerome Ragni
Productions	1972 Broadway

Dude (The Highway Life) is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. It is an allegory about good and evil, the conflict between mankind's creative and destructive urges, the power of love, and the joy to be found in simple pleasures. Dude is an Everyman who loses his innocence and fights to regain it.

As soon as the musical Hair opened, Ragni began to work on Dude. MacDermot was busy with Two Gentlemen of Verona but finally began to compose the music. In March 1972, their studio cast album, Salome Bey Sings Songs from Dude, was recorded and released on Kilmarnock Records. The music was more influenced by country music than their previous musical, Hair.

The rehearsal period was plagued with problems: Kevin Geer, the actor who had been cast in the leading role, Dude, was unable to sing the role acceptably and had to be replaced; the script (such as it was) was far from finished; Ragni's requests of the producers were bizarre (for example, 100 butterflies to be released at the beginning of each performance); and the cast threatened to walk out.

In The Broadway Theatre, the musicians were divided, with brass and woodwinds against the wall of one side of the playing area and strings at the other. To accommodate the multimedia presentation, the theatre was gutted and reconverted, at a cost of $800,000, into a circus-like arena in the center (a theatre in the round) filled with fake dirt (real dirt had caused dust; wetting it had caused mud), ramps, runways, catwalks, columns, trapezes, trapdoors, bleachers, and various mechanical and electronic gear. Performers moved freely between the round playing area, representing "Earth", and the audience, seated in flanking "valleys and foothills," with "mountains and mountain tops" beyond and "tree tops and trees" (mezzanine) above. "Heaven and hell" were also represented. The overall effect was of a circus being performed in a primeval forest.