The result: a score that tells the story instead of just decorating it —familiar enough to feel like home, surprising enough to keep you guessing.
THE BONUS ROUND is technically a jukebox musical — but it doesn't act like one. Songs earn their place through dramatic necessity, not nostalgia, and sequences often weave two, three, even ten songs into a single number that pushes plot and reveals character.
Set in the late 1970s, the score pulls from everywhere — rock, disco, folk, pop, singer-songwriter — shifting between diegetic and non-diegetic as each moment demands. The score spans the era's full range — from Fleetwood Mac to Elvis Costello to Donna Summer — reflecting the eclecticism of the late '70s itself. The fun part: reinvention. A rock anthem becomes an intimate folk ballad. A disco hit turns into a theater showstopper. Familiar songs get new arrangements, new tempos, new context.
Sometimes we go the other way — playing a song straight, letting recognition do the work, like the Act Two 8-track sequence (a genuine highlight). Other times, songs live in the background — bookstores, cafés — lyrics quietly doing comedic double duty. And occasionally, we dig up something obscure just to keep the story, not the song, front and center.