Freaky Friday, A New Musical is a contemporary and comedic update on an American classic retold multiple times through various modalities. Many of us are familiar with the most recent Disney film adaptation starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. This latest in a long line of adaptations comes from the 1972 book of the same title by Mary Rodgers which was itself based on an 1882 novel Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers by F. Anstey. Despite having experienced this timeless story and its various iterations, we continue to be entertained and enlightened by its concept. Hopefully this is because most of us can relate to feeling misunderstood as either parent or child and not because any of us have had the misfortune of being supernaturally transported into someone else's body. In our version, Katherine is an overworked mother who magically swaps bodies with her teenage daughter Ellie. Mother and daughter have “Just One Day” to reverse the magic and put things right again before Katherine’s big wedding. As they race through time trapped in each other’s realities, mother and daughter finally experience what it truly means “to walk a day” in someone else’s shoes.
Set in Chicago during the spring of 2024, Westfield Theatre’s production is inspired by Ellie’s hourglass. The hourglass, a gift from Ellie’s deceased father, is the cause of our story’s magical body swap. The “freakiness” ensues as Ellie and Katherine fight over the hourglass and it begins to glow. Suddenly, Ellie finds herself in Katherine’s body and Ellie is inside her mother’s body. (Don’t worry it confused us at first too!). Time and reality, as the characters know it becomes warped and this forces our production to move rapidly between multiple locations as mother and daughter cause upheaval in each other’s worlds. As a result, we chose to have a split unit set that plays with audience perspective. On stage right is Katherine’s world (home) and on-stage left is Ellie’s (school). Center stage is an open and versatile space where everything swirls together as mother and daughter grow closer to understanding each other. Outdoor locations of Chicago move “outside” the proscenium arch into the house to engage and play with the audience further. Irregular outlines of Katherine’s home and Ellie’s school become background silhouettes and wheeled wagon platforms swiftly transition between locations and moments. As the sands flow through an hourglass, our production explores the transient nature of time and how quickly we go from being a child to becoming our parents. Once everything goes back to the Blake family’s “new normal,” we hope the audience can exit the theater with the memory of how important it is to see the world from the perspective of others and how precious time can be with the people we call family.
Dr. Enza Giannone-Hosig
Director
