Why Alan Menken wanted to write an original Sister Act musical

When the award-winner musical Sister Act hits Sydney this week, audiences shouldn’t expect to hear the same music featured in the blockbuster movie its based on. Celebrated composer Alan Menken had other ideas.

It isn’t that Alan Menken wasn’t able to use the beloved music from the film Sister Act when he turned to creating the stage musical based on the Hollywood blockbuster.

He simply didn’t want to.

“I could have, I didn’t want to,” Menken said.

“First of all, the film was basically song parodies, it is all it was. They were taking existing songs and then doing a wink on them and I just really wanted to write an original Sister Act musical where the whole score is telling that story, not opening the sort of fourth wall so to speak with a big wink at things that we already knew in another context.”

It wasn’t an easy prospect for Menken, an industry great who is one of just 19 ever to achieve EGOT status. That means he has an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar (eight to be exact) and a Tony to his name.

Songwriter Alan Menken received the Johnny Mercer Award at the 48th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala in 2017.

He was up for the challenge as part of the core crew that brought the production to life with a regional California production in 2006 and later making it to London’s West End and Broadway in New York.

It scored both Laurence Olivier Award and Tony Award nominations.

Casey Donovan in Sister Act. Picture: Benny Capp

The original 1992 film starred Whoopi Goldberg as Deloris Van Cartier, with Australia’s Casey Donovan set to star in the role in the Australian production that opens at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre on August 7.

Van Cartier is a lounge singer forced into hiding in a nunnery after witnessing a mob murder.

“The bones of the story were in the movie,” Menken said, chatting to Insider via Zoom from his US home.

“But when you’re writing a musical and adapting a story like that for the musical, there’s many things you want to do – you want to certainly find and refine the dramatic arc and set up certain elements that can be sung and basically enlist you in the journey of our central character in a musical sense.

Sister Act composer Alan Menken is one of just 19 ever to achieve EGOT – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony – status. Picture: Getty Images

“We had much more broad fun with our villain and also with his sidekicks, just so much fun material. And then so many wink at the stylistic tropes from the ’70s and having fun with them.

“And then the contrast between all of that and going into the convent and having that very quiet, kind of contemplative liturgy of the church. And then, boom, Dolores comes into that like a bull in a China shop.”

Casey Donovan with Genevieve Lemon as Mother Superior. Picture: Benny Capp

Dame Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy, Harvey Keitel, Mary Wickes and Bill Nunn also appeared in the film, which was one of the most successful box office hits of the ’90s. It featured iconic tracks like Rescue Me, Roll With Me Henry, My Guy, Shout and I Will Follow Him.

On stage across the various musical productions, some big names have been involved too, including Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Saunders, Keala Settle, Raven Symone and Alexandra Burke. Goldberg played Mother Superior on the West End for a spell.

In Australia, veteran actor Genevieve Lemon will play Mother Superior.

“In the end, it is a story of faith,” Menken said. “Deloris finds her emotional home with these sisters and so it is the marriage of those worlds that really gives us hope for our world.”

Menken has done his research on Donovan ahead of the Australian show opening.

Her version of This Is Me from The Greatest Showman blew him away.

“Casey is amazing, she’s got such a larger-than-life personality and then great chops, great voice,” he said. “She’s a natural. I shy away from giving notes or direct input to actors in my works because it can tend to intimidate and it can tend to just interfere, please make it your own, have fun with it. I have a lot of faith in the material. She is going to be wonderful.”

Speaking down the line, Menken is unassuming. He sounds like just a normal bloke despite his many accolades and the fact he’s worked on everything from Little Shop of Horrors to The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Enchanted and even Sesame Street.

Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, with whom he wrote the songs for Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.

“You know, Janice (ballet dancer Janice Roswick) and I are married now for going on 52 years,” he said. “We met when we were starving artists in New York. I wrote a rock ballet and she was in it right out of college. And we have our (two) daughters. That’s what life is to me.

“I let my music speak for me and I’m very gratified that people consider me to be special but, to me, it comes through me. I’m just happy … as long as we have a nice home and a nice life and work with great people and really the other stuff is not really all that appealing to be honest.”

By other stuff, he means fame and the trappings of the red carpet.

“It is a fairly painful experience. I have won more than anyone else but still, you pull up to the red carpet and the door opens and we get out of the car and the photographers or whoever go, who are they? We are the people behind the camera, the people backstage and it is great, I couldn’t ask for a better role to be in. I get all the advantages without any of the disadvantages.”

The first Australian production of Sister Act opens at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre on August 7. Tickets are on sale for Brisbane and Melbourne seasons now.