Season 2 of ‘Schmigadoon’ Uses ‘60s And ‘70s ‘Dark’ Musicals To Explore The Concept Of Finding Happiness

Although he didn’t know it at the time, being Jesus helped prepare Keegan-Michael Key for this season of Schmigadoon!

The first musical I ever did in my life was Godspell, and I played Jesus,” explains Key.

Godspell is just one of the musicals to be parodied in this season of Schmigadoon!, along with Cabaret, Chicago, Pippin, Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie, Company, Hair, and Sweeney Todd, among others, says series co-creator and executive producer, Cinco Paul.

Last season, the musical comedy, paid homage to Golden Age musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, while this season will feature satirical looks at the musicals of the ’60s and ‘70s.

The series stars an ensemble cast including Key, Cecily Strong, Ariana DeBose, Martin Short, Dove Cameron, Jaime Camil, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Ann Harada, Jane Krakowski, and Aaron Tveit, with Tituss Burgess and Patrick Page joining the cast for season two.

The second season will include new original musical numbers from co-creator, executive producer and showrunner Cinco Paul, with direction by Robert Luketic and choreography by Christopher Gattelli.

About this season, Paul says, “As we were shooting last season, what I started to think was that everybody has a lot of affection for the ‘40s and ‘50s musicals, but I think people particularly feel passionate about these musicals. I mean, musicals got darker. They don’t have happy endings. They’re more complicated.”

He adds that he was excited to delve into that era’s composers as well, feeling that, “The sound of the Rodgers and Hammerstein era is pretty similar. All the songs sound the same. But in the ‘60s and ‘70s you have the rock pop of [Stephen] Schwartz and [Andrew] Lloyd Webber, and [John] Kander and [Fred] Ebb with their sort of ragtime and [Stephen] Sondheim with his thing. So, it’s just there was so much variety in this era, the musicals just exploded.”

Paul says that the first thing he does before he starts a season is, “I sit down at the piano with all the scores, and I play them through mostly from start to finish just so I can get them in my bones and start to get an idea of like what are the tendencies harmonically and musically and lyrically.”

In addition to this, Paul says that he was already, ‘Super familiar with a lot of these shows.’

In writing the musical numbers, he says that, “As I get deeper in the season, I start to feel a little more original, I think, in a way, and the show also becomes more of a, instead of a show about people trapped in a musical, it becomes a genuine musical. And so, while there’s always a target, things became a little more like ‘I’m just going to try to write something evocative of this show or the era.’”

Key feels that because of the complexity of the music of composers like Schwartz and Sondheim, “the characters in this season of the show are so layered, and have more complications to them. It really reflects the era in which [these musicals] were written.”

Even though the musicals featured this season are ‘darker,’ according to Paul, in crafting the narrative of this season he landed on the theme – happiness.

“I really thought, ‘how do you find happiness in a world that seems so destined to make you miserable?’ And I realized, ‘oh yeah, none of these [musicals] have happy endings,’ and even when they have a happy ending it’s kind of ambiguous, and so, it seemed perfect to give [our main characters] the challenge of creating a happy ending in this world.”

‘Schmigadoon!’ is available for streaming on Apple TV+