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When someone tells Steven Sater that one of his ideas seems nearly impossible, it only makes him want to pursue it more.
The Tony Award-winning writer — who penned the book and lyrics for the groundbreaking 2006 Broadway musical Spring Awakening as well as the popular Alice by Heart — is busy with a slew of new musical projects, and one has been years in the making.
Murder at the Gates, his new murder mystery musical featuring songs by English musician James Bourne of the band Busted, is playing a concert this week at 54 Below following the recent release of its concept album.
It’s an exciting moment for Sater, who exclusively tells BroadwayWorld that the project has been in development for years. In fact, he says, Murder at the Gates “grew out of” conversations he had decades ago when he was “encouraged so strongly to write a contemporary version of Spring Awakening” instead of keeping the Frank Wedekind story in its original time period.
However, it sparked another idea. “It got me into this place of thinking about what it would be like to write something about how totally effed teens are today,” Sater says, explaining he wanted to make it a murder mystery. “I loved Agatha Christie as a kid.”
What some don’t know, Sater says, is that he “got into an argument” with Stephen Sondheim because the late theater legend “said to me that there was no way to create a murder mystery musical.”
“He had all these reasons,” Sater reveals, “and when you tell me I can’t do something, it’s like, ‘Okay, I’ll show you!’”
Sater eventually met Bourne, with whom he wrote pop songs. “He came over to my house because he thought one of the songs would be good for Lea [Michele],” says Sater. “So we’re watching the video of Lea at the Hollywood Bowl singing ‘On My Own’ [from Les Misérables], and I just thought: Whoa, this play I had written, Murder at the Gates… It was just a murder mystery play. What if James and I brought pop songs to it?”
From there, Sater says, they began developing Murder at the Gates, described as “Clue meets Clueless” or “a black-comic murder mystery from a Gen-Z, gated-community America.”
“There was this whole addictive lure of these pop songs, and underneath it was this kind of undercurrent of teen nihilism — what’s really going on in these kids’ hearts,” Sater explains. “That’s when it started, and we did our first [workshop] 10 years ago.”
Sater and Bourne began developing the musical, which had an early workshop with a cast including Molly Gordon, Mike Faist, Derek Klena and Ashley Park. But the project was stalled along the way, and then the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily shut down the theater industry.
Recently, though, Sater and Bourne got back to work, recorded a concept album and planned a 54 Below show featuring a cast of young performers direct from the Jimmy Awards.
“I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be amazing to hear people who are actually the age of the high school kids in the show sing these songs?’” Sater explains.
As for what’s next, Sater — who has leaned into TikTok and other social media platforms to promote his projects in development — says the sky’s the limit.
“What we’re talking about doing is a reading and then a 29-hour workshop and potentially even creating out of that a visual album,” he says. “But what do I want? Yeah, the ideal to me would be to launch it commercially Off-Broadway and then let it go from there.”
Tony Award winner Matt Doyle leads a 54 Below concert cast that includes Morgan Dudley (Descendants: The Rise of Red, Hadestown), Diego Enrico (The Book of Mormon national tour), Emersyn Hunt (Jimmy Awards finalist), Jake James (Jimmy Awards winner), Julian Lerner (Disney’s Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires, Yes Day, Monster Summer), London Mays (Jimmy Awards finalist), Echo Deva Picone (Trevor: The Musical Off-Broadway), Jack Roden (Parade national tour) and Gretchen Shope (Jimmy Awards winner).
Murder at the Gates will play 54 Below on Sept. 4 at 7 p.m. For more information and tickets, visit 54Below.org.
Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski, Walter McBride
