Carrie: The Musical Ensemble

Carrie: The Musical is a stage adaptation of Stephen King’s 1974 horror novel Carrie, telling the story of a bullied teenage girl with telekinetic powers and her domineering, religiously fanatical mother. The show is notorious in theatre history: its original 1988 Broadway production, directed by Terry Hands with songs by Michael Gore, Dean Pitchford, and Lawrence D. Cohen, closed after only a handful of performances and became one of the most famous flops in musical theatre, later chronicled in the book Not Since Carrie. Linzi Hateley originated the title role, with Betty Buckley as her mother Margaret White.

Despite its rocky premiere, the show developed a cult following among musical theatre fans, and a substantially revised Off-Broadway production in 2012 helped rehabilitate its reputation, restoring several songs and reworking the book and score. Recordings from these productions preserve numbers such as «In», «Carrie», «You Shine», «And Eve Was Weak», and «Why Not Me?», which blend pop-rock balladry with darker, more theatrical material reflecting the story’s horror elements.

Stephen King himself has spoken favorably about the musical, noting he appreciated it for many of the same reasons critics dismissed it. Today Carrie: The Musical is studied as a case study in Broadway history and occasionally revived by regional and student theatre companies drawn to its unusual blend of teen horror and coming-of-age musical drama.