"Berry Gordy's Motown" to open on Broadway March 11th 2013.

[bradsupremes]

I said it before and I'll say it again; they should have created a musical using the Motown catalog but with an original, unique story completely unrelated to Motown's history or its artists. It would have given them, essentially, free reign to develop characters and a story without having to worry about getting sued for portrayals of certain people and telling a false history.

It appears from photos we've seen that the show will cover a 25-30 year timeline. A hell of a lot happened in that time and to squeeze things into a two hour show is not going to work. Many things will be completely left out or glossed over and some of those things may be significant to the story. As JillFoster posted above, it's a puff piece which doesn't make good theatre. If Berry wanted this to be about his relationship with Diana then the focus should be completely on that story. No need to create roles for Mary Wells, the Temptations, Stevie, Marvin, etc in that particular story. I haven't seen the rehearsals nor do I know what's going on in its development. These are merely suggestions. Personally, I feel if they want this to work then the timeline should be shorten to only the Detroit years [[1959-1972) and focus in on how the company broke down racial barriers with an incredibly unique sound. Completely cut out the Berry/Diana relationship story. Narrow on what Berry did to make his company a success in the golden years. Motown was already a success by the time of the move out to LA, so that whole part of the story doesn't need to be told in the musical.

We'll see how it turns out. I hope for its success, but if it fails then we'll know where the problem was hiding.