Homemaking queen Martha Stewart is getting a musical tribute, and its creator better hope it’s nothing short of perfection.
“Everything you’re doing is wrong,” the trailer for “The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Martha Stewart” declares — yet musical theater (and television) veteran Ryan Raftery is going to try anyway to bring the story of America’s foremost homemaker to life.
Set to premiere Aug. 7 for a five-show run at the off-Broadway Public Theater’s cabaret Joe’s Pub, the show is described as “the fascinating story of the woman who changed the way we live our lives by daring us to try harder.”
Challenge accepted. Raftery not only wrote the show but will star as America’s first female self-made billionaire. The production is an origin story that begins where most other celebrity stories would’ve ended: when Stewart enters jail in 2004 to serve five months for charges stemming from insider trading.
That should’ve been the end of “America’s favorite purveyor of perfectionism,” as Raftery describes her in an interview with The Cut. Instead, she rose like a phoenix, with Snoop Dogg as the wind beneath her wings, to reclaim her throne and continues to be a pop culture icon at age 75.
“The Rise and Fall (and Rise)” covers it all, from Stewart’s childhood in New Jersey to her ascent as America’s ideal homemaker in an age when such things were falling out of fashion. Truly an epic saga on par with anything the Greeks invented, Stewart’s story is apparently best told through parodies of songs by artists from Metallica to Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bruno Mars, because as Raftery tells The Cut, “Martha Stewart does not have pet peeves. She has psychotic hatreds.”
Well, that’s certainly one reason to burst into song.
All kidding aside, Raftery has already done a musical about Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and lived to tell about it, so take that as the ringing endorsement it is and get your tickets now.
