Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical

Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical

Ashley Robinson (Book); Dan Gillespie Sells (Music); Shakina (Lyrics)

Based on the Play by Ed Graczyk 

It’s hot and dusty in McCarthy, Texas where it has not rained in three years.  But in the summer of 1975, the loyal “Disciples of James Dean” are mopping the sweat from their brows as they gather to honor the twentieth anniversary of that young, iconic star’s tragic death soon after the filming in nearby Marfa of the epic drama Giant in which he co-starred with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.  In tiny McCarthy itself now dried up and mostly ignored, in a 5-and-dime store whose genre is gasping for its last breath, and within a bus ride’s distance of the movie’s now crumbling, once-famous mansion, Reata, Ed Graczyk places his 1976 play that went on to become Cher’s big stage and then big film debuts, Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

Now two years after the ground-breaking, first trans actor cast in a TV network sitcom, Shakina, sang a few songs in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s 2023 New Works Festival — songs about the 5 and Dime story — the company presents an electrifying, exuberant, and in the end, deeply emotional world premiere musical that adds much heart and hope to Graczyk’s original, quirky comedy.  Lyricist Shakina has been joined by book writer Ashley Robinson and music composer Dan Gillespie Sells (whom together recently opened their musical version of Brokeback Mountain in London’s West End) as she also stars in TheatreWork’s 54th season-ending Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical — a summertime must-see and deservedly to be sold-out-hit for Bay Area audiences.

Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.

Rating: 5 E, MUST-SEE

A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production 

Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean: A New Musical continues through July 13, 2025, in a one-hour, forty-minute (no intermission) world premiere production by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road Palo Alto CA. 

Photo Credit: Kevin Berne