In 2024, after two decades as a professional theater reviewer, I was sitting down for my first Broadway show. My brother had picked it, my mom had arranged the trip and my son was at my side.
The show? “Back to the Future: The Musical”.
It is now coming to Wharton Center Jan. 13-18.
The musical is based on the film — starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown — that came out the summer before my senior year in high school, and the musical transported me back to those days. At one point, I leaned over to my son and whispered, “I had that outfit in my closet.”
And yes, I wore my hair the way Jennifer Parker, Marty’s girlfriend, did.
Bob Gale, whom Fox once described as the “gatekeeper of the franchise,” had a similar reaction when creating the musical. He recalled the first time the full ensemble came out in costume for the opening number.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, did we really look that bad?’” Gale said. “Yes, we did. It’s very accurate.”
For those of us who were Marty McFly’s age when the film came out, the musical is filled with nostalgia and winks at a time gone by, including a bench advertising a video rental store.
It reinforces that anything set in our high school years is now firmly a period piece — especially when you realize that a time-traveling trip in the DeLorean to the film’s opening scene would require a longer journey than the one Marty takes back to 1955 to witness his parents’ meeting.
“Back to the Future” delivers plenty of laughs and moments of recognition. The story remains loyal to the original films, preserving its character arcs while allowing iconic lines to return with new twists and setups.
As a comedy, the musical leans into the meta, making jokes about 2020 being a year without disease and having Doc Brown acknowledge the backup singers who materialize when he starts to sing.
Nearly 10 years ago, I learned that some memories were better left alone. I stopped watching television in 1992, but I had fond recollections of many shows from the 1980s. One of my favorites was “Knight Rider.” In a fit of nostalgia, I bought a boxed set of the first season to watch on my computer’s DVD player. I was horrified at how bad it was and couldn’t make it past two episodes.
“Back to the Future: The Musical,” however, knows how to take inspiration from something that felt good at the time but did not age well. Gale said he rejected the use of video projections to show the DeLorean’s time displays onstage. As he considered alternatives, he remembered “Knight Rider” and decided to give the DeLorean a voice. The director agreed — and suggested that the car should have a bit of attitude.
It is one of the choices that turns the DeLorean into a character rather than just a stylish time machine. Gale said when they workshopped the show without props or set dressing, a woman wearing a silver jacket played the DeLorean, standing onstage with Doc and Marty and raising her arms when the doors were meant to open.
“It was really funny,” Gale said. “The audience loved it. Maybe that’s what we’ll do for the high school version.”
The night we saw the musical on Broadway, an audience member directly behind us whipped out their phone to film the DeLorean’s big final effect. A nearby usher, clearly assigned to watch for such violations, began shouting and shone a flashlight in our eyes. Given the world we live in, my immediate fear was that we were in an active shooter situation and my focus shifted to getting my son, mom and brother safely out of the theater.
As a result, I missed what is widely considered the production’s signature stage moment. The touring show does not attempt the same thing, as the logistics proved incompatible with dozens of differently sized theaters.
When asked later what my professional opinion was of “Back to the Future: The Musical,” I shrugged. I’d give it an A+ for spectacle and special effects. Beyond that, it offered a few hours of entertainment that lacked the freshness and surprise of the movies. It was fun. It made me laugh. It didn’t break new storytelling or emotional ground.
Perhaps, though, that wasn’t what the creators were trying to do.
For the past 40 years, Gale said, it has been a constant source of joy to him that people continue to reference the film and take pleasure from it. He credits its universality to the questions every generation asks about their parents: What were they like as teenagers? How did they meet? What was their first date like? Marty gets to find out.
My son told me that while watching the musical, he found himself thinking the original movie must have been really weird. Still, he got to have his own Marty McFly moment, immersed in the world of 1985.
A month after the first movie was released 40 years ago, I met his father, my future husband, and we went on our first date.
Watching my son take in a musical set in that same year, I realized he was encountering 1985 not as nostalgia, but as history. For him, it was a world to visit. For me, it was a place I once lived. Marty McFly gets to witness the moment his parents’ story begins. Sitting in that Broadway theater, my son was witnessing the world where ours did.
Last week, on New Year’s Eve, he proposed to his partner. He chose that date because it was also our wedding anniversary — 33 years and counting. Next New Year’s Eve, they plan to marry on the same day.
Their story will be different from ours. It should be. But like Marty, they understand the power of where a story begins — and how far it can travel.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: When nostalgia meets the future — experiencing an ’80s classic on the stage
Reporting by Bridgette M. Redman, For the Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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