What to Expect From Stage Show

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called….a Purple Rain musical? 

You read that correctly: the iconic 1984 movie (with its accompanying, now canon soundtrack album) has been adapted for the stage. After an initial 2025 out-of-town production in Prince’s own Minneapolis, it will officially come to Broadway in spring of 2027, starting previews March 12 and opening April 12 at the Majestic Theatre.

“Everything that Prince did in his career was so theatrical,” producer Orin Wolf tells Billboard. “So it’s just an organic move from the film to the stage.”

Wolf has plenty of experience bringing innovative musicals with pop music origins to Broadway: he produced best musical Tony-winners Once and The Band’s Visit, as well as recent nominees like Illinoise and Buena Vista Social Club. And he’s assembled a stacked creative team that includes director Saheem Ali (with whom he worked on Buena Vista) and Tony-winning music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator Jason Michael Webb, who most recently served as music director of the mega-successful Michael Jackson musical MJ. 

“There are a lot of different ways in which musicians’ catalogs get put into story form, but it’s very rare to have a story where the impulse came from the musician himself or herself,” Wolf says. “But Purple Rain really was something that came from Prince’s own imagination — not just the song and the album, but the story of The Kid, the idea of telling a story about what it was like to grow up in the mid ’80s in Minneapolis and to come up in that scene. A lot of things were inspired by his own experience as an artist and his life, but truly, this was an invention of his, and that was fascinating to me.” 

Shortly before announcing the Broadway production, Wolf and Webb spoke to Billboard about the work they’ve done on Purple Rain, what Prince knew of the show and what audiences can expect from it. 

What the thinking was behind Purple Rain needing a stage adaptation in the first place?

Orin Wolf: My impulse around it started with what I thought was just this very rare opportunity with a catalog show like this. There are so few properties like that that exist, especially at this magnitude, with this kind of reach and this kind of global following.

And then beyond that, as I learned more about the story of how the film was made and how the album and the songs came together, he was actually responding to the story — I mean, there were examples of songs like “When Doves Cry” that were written while they were shooting, in response to a moment in the film they needed to complete. That was very instructive in terms of what I think my assignment was as a producer, which is to really try to get underneath what [Prince’s] initial impulses were. You can love or hate the film, but the point is that it came from an artist.

Was the idea of the musical something Prince was aware of in his lifetime?

Wolf: By the time I got involved officially, he had passed. But one of the reasons why this conversation was able to commence was because Prince did talk about it. He talked about the idea of this being done on stage — it wasn’t something that he had gotten to do yet, but it was certainly not a secret, and it was certainly something that he understood could happen. So I think when I approached [the estate], there was an openness to it for that reason. 

Bobby Z, who was in The Revolution, and longtime Prince collaborator Morris Hayes, from New Power Generation, are both music advisers on the show. What has it been like getting their insights on Prince’s music? 

Jason Michael Webb: As a lifelong Prince music student, to work with Bobby Z and Morris Hayes, who was like Prince’s [music director] for a good chunk of years that Prince was working and knows him so intimately well….to have a window into Prince’s experience is insane to me, and such a gift. [They’ve been] giving us a window into Prince’s process, which is really shaping our process. The people who were there with him are saying, “Yeah, this feels like the energy.”

Morris was an artist that Prince took a liking to and then invited on and became important in his camp. Just recently, Morris told me about how he went from being in front as an audience member watching this man, to being on the keyboards behind. So, for example, sometimes Prince might turn upstage and do a guitar solo, and whatever’s happening for Prince in that moment isn’t necessarily for the audience, but Morris got to see that man connect to his music. Just to be with someone who witnessed that connection, it encouraged me to re-focus, even when dealing with the cast, getting them to understand that yes, the music has notes and it has the lyric, but it’s actually about the connection to the music, and that’s creating the magic.

Bobby, of course, was the drummer in Purple Rain, and so he knew what was important. He could recount some of the things that Prince shared with him, some of the adjustments that he wanted made. “Oh, the kick is too busy here,” “there’s not enough hi-hat here,” “there needs to be a clap for when I do this motion.” Knowing that level of detail was one of the big takeaways for me in this process.

Jason, MJ must have given you some valuable experience working on a Broadway musical about an artist in which their estate is involved. How has the experience with the Prince estate compared?

Webb: Well, I think they’re similar in that it’s all birthed out of this love for that material and this love for these artists and for what they were trying to do. To be placed in a position to continue that work, where that’s what’s actually driving the entire thing, we don’t run into a whole lot of issues where we’re not aligned. When we get together to talk with the estate, with both MJ and this one, I’m really amazed at how aligned everyone is when it comes to the creative direction and the choices that we’re making.

Wolf: [Prince’s estate has] allowed us to take risks. They’ve been very patient with us, knowing that we’re developing a new musical with material that comes with a lot of history and a lot of expectations, and we’ve had to make all sorts of adjustments and turns along the way, like you would for any development of any new show. And I’ve just been amazed, like Jason said, about how supportive and how aligned we’ve all been. I think they trust that there’s going to be integrity in everything we do.

There are extra songs in the show that were not in the movie — how did you decide which ones to include? 

Wolf: Prince evolved into almost a new entity with every project, so staying within a certain time period was to our advantage. Of course, the Purple Rain years happened to be some of his most prolific, when he was gaining the freedom and knowledge that he could create for all these other groups and have extensions of himself. And so, what we end up with is not just the nine songs that are on the album, or even the few more songs in the film from other artists, but there’s entire catalogs from other artists [like The Time and Apollonia 6] that we have access to, and we’ve come up with a really exciting 20-ish songs that are mostly living in that era.
 
If there’s a main critique of Purple Rain the film, it’s usually that the story itself doesn’t quite match the quality of the music and performances in it. How are you navigating that as you adapt it?

Wolf: I’ve tried to actually reserve all judgment of the film itself, because I’ve certainly heard all sorts of opinions from people who think it’s the greatest film ever made, and people who don’t. I’m trying to meet the film where it’s at as someone who’s now been tasked with adapting it, and part of meeting the film where it’s at is understanding who made it and where were they in their lives at the time. I mean, they were kids; these were young people setting out to make a film in a very ambitious way. And so, when you look at it through that lens, I think our job is to just get behind: what were their impulses? This is truly an adaptation; we’re not taking the film and just putting it on stage. And for me, a great adaptation is about really trying to understand what the initial impulse was of why an artist created a work of art, and then what is that new lens that we can bring to it that will be additive for the audience? We’re not trying to fix Purple Rain. We’re just trying to bring more people to it.

How are you guys ensuring this feels like a rock show, and not rock through a Broadway filter?
 
Wolf: As soon as we knew [Broadway] was the next leg of the journey, Jason and I were 100% aligned: we need all this music on stage. There’s no orchestra pit; there’s no sound that you’re going to hear on that stage that you don’t see getting made. And not only that, but we are now going through a whole casting process where all the actors who are playing these famous characters, like Wendy and the Kid and Apollonia, all of them are playing instruments — there’s no miming. At the end of the day, Purple Rain is a story about musicians, and I want to see that and I want the audience to feel that.

Webb: I’m a Prince fan. I know what I want to hear, and I know that the audience has a certain expectation, and the music carries such a wonderful weight. We’re making sure that we have great musicians who can deliver the thing to the caliber that, we can only hope, Prince may have approved of. 

Is there a song that comes to mind from the show that’s really reinvented from the way it’s done in the movie? 

Wolf: “I Would Die 4 U” is touched on twice in our show, and the first time is in this very sincere moment of connection. It’s taking a song that we’re so used to hearing in a certain way, and in the sort of simplification of it, it gets right to the root of what the song is about. Jason has brought so many new colors to it, and it’s serving the story in such a thoughtful and complete way.

Webb: The songs are so valuable, but it’s almost like meeting somebody at a party that is wearing something really cool or their hair is doing something cool, and you’re kind of interested. Then, getting deeper into conversation, you might realize, “Oh, there’s something really awesome actually here that I’ve been overlooking.” That’s what we’ve done with some of these songs. We realized that once you place them in a new situation and really get a chance to meditate on them, it clears the smoke, so that you can really hear that message underneath.

What are the big lessons you took away from the Minneapolis production, and how are you refining it for Broadway?

Wolf: First of all, it was very intentional that we went to Minneapolis. Prince just had this very loyal and very smart, informed [fanbase], and deep connection to his base, and we know that so many of them either live in Minneapolis or are certainly used to coming there to get their annual dose of Prince. We really wanted that feedback, and we really listened.

What we all felt was that the music needed to become this propulsive force of storytelling in a way that it wasn’t fully, that we didn’t get that right in Minneapolis. We wanted to go further with that. So every choice that I’ve made as a producer since then, including bringing [director] Saheem Ali on board, who I had done Buena Vista Social Club with, I knew he and I had a shared belief that this is ultimately a story about musicians. What informed every decision we’ve made since Minneapolis has been about that one thing: how do we put the making of the music and the music itself at the very center of the storytelling engine? And I think what we’ve ended up, there’s more storytelling happening in the songs. The songs themselves feel more essential, and the show flies by. It feels like a rocket ship — once you get on board, it just moves quickly, and it has an electricity and a passion that hopefully, in the alchemy of the entire experience of it, people get a sense of Prince and of Prince’s legacy.