Ron Shelton brings "Bull Durham" home
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"Bull Durham," the cult favorite story of love and minor league baseball, is returning to the Bull City come September — this time in the form of a musical.
Why it matters: Ron Shelton, the writer of the 1988 movie, and several co-creators hope the local showing will drum up enough financing and interest to take it to Broadway.
Driving the news: Theatre Raleigh, Raleigh's professional nonprofit theater company, will produce "Bull Durham, A New Musical". It will run at Duke University's Reynolds Industries Theater from Sept. 10-22.
The big picture: Nearly four decades on, "Bull Durham, " starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, still finds a way to captivate audiences — a fact that still shocks Shelton sometimes.
- When making the original movie, the studio and financiers behind the project hated what Shelton was doing. He's been trying to similarly get the musical financed — even doing a limited run in Atlanta — but the pandemic, he said, created roadblocks.
- "But [the story] does seem to hold up," Shelton told Axios from his home north of Los Angeles. "I think the themes are universal and timeliness. You've got a man who loves something more than that thing loves him back — and everyone has that experience with another person, job or passion."
Zoom in: Shelton describes the musical as "slightly madcap" and "very physical."
- The songs are written by Susan Werner, who Shelton says would take a line from the movie and transform it into song. "It's not typical Broadway music," he added, "it's more, you know, Southern roadhouse."
- The musical also delves into subplots of several minor characters, Shelton said, including evangelical baseball player Jimmy's romantic relationship with baseball groupie Millie.
What they're saying: Shelton, who is now 78 and still writes daily, is excited to get back to Durham to prepare for the show's debut.
- When he picked Durham as the setting of the movie, he did so because people still walked from the neighborhoods to the old baseball park. The city was at the nadir of its 1980s decline, with empty warehouses everywhere. "I thought, yes, this is the minors," he said.
- Now, Durham is a thriving tech and life sciences hub with great restaurants, he said. And the house where Susan Sarandon's character Annie lived is under contract for $1.6 million.
- "I could have bought it for $60,000" at the time, Shelton said.
Tickets for the preview performances from Sept. 10-12 cost $35.
- Tickets for opening night and the remaining dates will cost between $48 to $85. They can be purchased at tickets.duke.edu.