Musical About Primordial Goo

Ken AshfordPopular Culture1 Comment

Primordialsoup Well, why not?

Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann’s Yeast Nation, a new comic musical about single-celled yeast organisms and their struggles in the timeline of Earth’s evolution, was heard in a private industry reading in New York City Oct. 21.

The Tony Award-winning writers are known for their satiric Broadway musical, Urinetown. The starry Manhattan Theatre Club presentation of Yeast Nation included contributions by two of the earlier show’s stars (Hunter Foster and Nancy Opel) as well as its director, John Rando.

In 2002, Kotis won a Tony Award for his book to Urinetown and Hollmann and Kotis shared a Best Score Tony for the show (Hollmann is the composer and co-lyricist, Kotis is the co-lyricist). John Rando won a Best Direction Tony for Urinetown.

The ensemble-oriented Yeast Nation is about a kingdom of one-celled yeast blobs (all of them named Jan – pronounced "yon") and how they reach for a new food source in the process of evolution. Within the community is a pair of daffy lovers, a leader, a villain, and more.