Alumna’s musical to hit NY festival stage

Alright, alright, alright. So how exactly did Matthew McConaughey win an Oscar? Some might say it was because of an outstanding performance in the 2013 film “Dallas Buyer’s Club.” Others might say it was a Faustian bargain.

This latter explanation is explored in a musical co-written by Mountain Brook native Carrie Morgan, titled “Matthew McConaughey vs. The Devil: An American Myth.”  

“Matthew McConaughey sells his soul to the devil for a role in “Dallas Buyer’s Club” — which we’ve changed to “Texas Buyer’s Club” for legal reasons — and starts losing some of his soul, not just in that he sold it to the devil,” Morgan said. “He alienates his best friend … and is sort of left with nothing after he wins his Oscar.”

Morgan co-wrote the book — the spoken portion of the musical — with her former roommate Emilie Landmann and co-wrote the lyrics with the musical’s composer Jonathan Quesenberry while she was living in Portland, Oregon.

“The idea came from my old roommate, who wanted to write a morality play about Matthew McConaughey, a morality play where Matthew McConaughey played the everyman character,” Morgan said. “I thought it was hysterical, so I was thinking about it and asked her, ‘What if we did a musical?’”

Neither Morgan nor Landmann had written musical, so Morgan approached Quesenberry about joining the project. It took about six months to write, after which they did a reading of the musical at a festival in Portland and asked for feedback.

“We started applying for festivals that summer [in 2016], and we got accepted into the New York Musical Festival, which was kind of our high goal of what we wanted to do,” Morgan said.

Being selected for the festival is exciting, Morgan said, and potentially opens a lot of doors.

“Tons of off-Broadway shows come out of there; Broadway shows come out of this jumping off point of the festival,” Morgan said.

They are also working with director Thomas Caruso, who formerly worked as associate director on the Broadway production of “Matilda” and just finished working on a production of “Groundhog Day.” 

While she first fell in love with theater during her time in Mountain Brook schools where she participated in choir and theater, Morgan said writing a musical and having that musical accepted into a festival was not something she had ever had as a goal. Morgan was also a musical theater major at Samford University.

“I can’t say that it’s something I’ve always dreamed of doing, but I’m so glad that it happened,” she said. “It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had working on a project.”

Through the musical, Morgan and her team hope to either find a producer who wants to produce it on a larger scale -— either regionally or off-Broadway — or that they be to auction off the rights to the musical. 

“It’s something that has been kind of an ongoing conversation, what the three of us want out of this and what’s realistic for the show,” Morgan said, “since it does have a lot of legal/ liability issues.”

“Matthew McConaughey vs. The Devil: An American Myth” will be performed at The Acorn Theatre during the New York Musical Festival on July 10, 14, 15 and 16. For more information, go to nymf.org.