SAVED runs Off-Broadway

Variety:

"The general trend for screen-to-stage adaptations is to make everything larger than life -- broadening the comedy, heightening the romance and rendering the characters sufficiently loud and cartoonish to play to the back row. But the creative team behind the tuner adaptation of the 2004 indie pic, which satirizes life in an evangelical Christian high school, has gone the opposite route. "Saved" the musical has reined in the spoofing and is softening the edges of the characters, playing them more empathetically. It even excises the exclamation mark from the film's title. ...

Librettist-lyricist John Dempsey:"Every time we took an honest, sympathetic approach, the show seemed to work," he explains. "Any time we went toward harsher satire or commentary, it stopped working." That's why Hilary Faye, the righteous leader of a teen-pop gospel group played by Mandy Moore in the movie, gets a sympathetic number in act two. She makes more sense as a real person, not as a caricature." ...

Composer-lyricist Michael Friedman: "Our audience isn't necessarily from a world where people speak in tongues or practice that really charismatic Christianity. It's more complicated and more satisfying to take them to an emotional place, where those beliefs suddenly seem very approachable." ...

Here's a link to the Playbill article. And NY Times has a slideshow interview with composer Michael Friedman. Runs at Playwrights Horizons, closes June 22.