The performance show “Tarantino Live” has officially been updated based on Quentin Tarantino’s last film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” for its London run.
For The Record, the production company behind the rock musical (whose repertoire includes shows based on the works of John Hughes, Baz Luhrmann, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis and Garry and Penny Marshall) has also revealed plans for a U.S. tour in 2024.
“Tarantino Live: Fox Force Five and the Tyranny of Evil Men” — its full title — combines Tarantino’s most iconic film scenes with live rock ‘n’ roll renditions of songs pulled from their soundtracks, merging the worlds of Hollywood and musical theater into a 360-degree live-concert experience.
The show, which previously played in Los Angeles in 2021, is adapted by Anderson Davis and Sumie Maeda from the works of Tarantino, directed by Davis and associate directed and choreographed by Maeda.
“Every single time Tarantino makes a new film we have to re-conceive — sometimes completely — the show, and this time around we’re dealing with ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,’ which is not only his newest film, but it’s also a look back on his whole career and the whole culture of Hollywood in itself,” Davis told Variety. “We’ve gone much further this time around, to really make sure that the love letter to classic Hollywood culture is in this production. There’s a couple of new songs from that movie in particular and a couple of new scenes and characters.”
The production follows the Fox Force Five — a group of fierce superwomen popularized by “Pulp Fiction” — as they join forces to fight the Tyranny of Evil Men. Tara Lee leads the five as Mia from “Pulp Fiction” (and her alter ego Beatrix Kiddo from “Kill Bill”). She is joined by two-time Olivier winner George Maguire as Vincent (a mashup of Vincent Vega from “Pulp Fiction,” Rick Dalton from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and Mr. Pink from “Reservoir Dogs”); Karen Mav as Jackie Brown; Anton Stephans as Jules from “Pulp Fiction” and Ordell from “Jackie Brown”; and Lifford Shillingford as Marsellus from “Pulp Fiction” and Django from “Django Unchained.”
The show, which features almost every major character in the Tarantino canon, began life in 2010 in a 60-seat bar in Hollywood from producer Shane Scheel, founder of For The Record. Davis, who was an actor at the time, joined the company and suggested re-conceiving the idea as an entirely original piece where the characters would be mashed up and storylines would overlap, creating a brand new narrative, not just highlights of the films and the songs.
“We landed on what I think is a new hybrid idea — it’s not quite a musical and not quite a rock concert, not quite a cabaret, but a little bit of all of it,” David said. The enterprise has the blessing of Tarantino.
Tarantino is famously a musical magpie, assembling his soundtracks from a variety of sources, and “Tarantino Live” follows suit. “We are doing what Tarantino does, which is take inspiration from something else, mash it up together and make something new,” Davis said.
The show is not only for Tarantino geeks. Those who come in cold will find a first layer of access in the show’s 33 songs, including “Bang Bang,” “Son of a Preacher Man” and “Stuck in the Middle With You.” Anyone “who’s ever turned on a radio” will be familiar with the music, Davis said.
“If you’ve never seen a Tarantino film in your life, you will re-experience the songs that you have heard in an entirely new context. And even though the show is a mashup of a lot of different scenes from different movies in his canon, it does follow a journey from beginning to middle to end that you can experience for the very first time,” Davis said. “Having said that, if you have seen every single movie and you are a Tarantino fanatic, you’re going to catch many more layers of the onion. You’re going to find little treats scattered all over this show.”
Coming up in 2024 is a plan that has been a decade in the making. For The Record has commissioned Belgium’s Het Spiegelpaleis to build a ‘Spiegeltent,’ a gigantic tent designed to look like a classic Hollywood movie theater that can be broken down and travel on eight 18-wheeler trucks. The tent will begin operating in Los Angeles in March 2024 and, from there, it will be sent out in the U.S. to three cities per year.
“We’ll do all of our shows ‘in rep’ as what we’re calling a live cinema box office where you actually walk up to the box up and you can see, ‘Okay, this week, they’re doing Martin Scorsese and next week, they’re doing Tarantino,’ and we’re going to travel around the country with that live box office cinema experience,” Davis said.
“Tarantino Live” features musical supervision and arrangements by Jesse Vargas, vocal design by Tony nominee AnnMarie Milazzo, scenic design by Emmy Award winner Matthew Steinbrenner, lighting design by Chris Davey, sound design by Ben Harrison, costume design by Steve Mazurek, video design by Perry Freeze and casting by Harry Blumenau. It’s produced by Scheel, with Paul Crewes as U.K. executive producer and Gareth Richards as U.K. producer.
“Tarantino Live” is on at London’s Riverside Studios through Aug. 13.