“EMPIRE RECORDS: THE MUSICAL”: McCarter Theatre Center is presenting “Empire Records: The Musical.” Written by librettist Carol Heikkinen in collaboration with composer and lyricist Zoe Sarnak, and directed by Trip Cullman, the musical will run through October 6 at McCarter’s Berlind Theatre. Above: Liam Pearce and Lorna Courtney. (Photo by Daniel Rader)

By Donald H. Sanborn III

McCarter Theatre is presenting the world premiere of Empire Records: The Musical. Adapted from the 1995 coming-of-age comedy film, the show has a book by Carol Heikkinen, the film’s screenwriter; and a score by composer and lyricist Zoe Sarnak.

Performances run through October 6.

The story follows the exploits of the titular record store’s employees, who will do almost anything to prevent the independent store from becoming a franchised branch of a corporate behemoth.

This production brings many things full circle for Sarnak, who is a Princeton native. Her fond memories of the town include seeing productions such as A Christmas Carol at McCarter, “so it’s special to come to work every day here.”

Sarnak was born in the Bay Area, but her family moved here when she was 3. “Riverside, Princeton Charter School, and then Princeton High School,” she says in an August 13 phone conversation with this writer. Asked whether she attended Princeton University, she laughs and replies that, despite both of her parents having worked at the University, “Hilariously, I went to Harvard.”

But she quickly adds that Princeton “feels very much like a second home. I went to Harvard, and then I moved to New York City, where I now live. But my parents have always had the house in Princeton, so over the years I’ve always come back. I’ve always felt connected to the town.”

Sarnak was a frequent visitor to the Princeton Record Exchange — a record store not unlike Empire Records — along with her high school classmates. For her, being able to hold a recording in her hands (as opposed to listening to a digital iteration) is irreplaceable.

Today, she finds it thrilling to “walk back into the record store that helped me find myself. That’s what’s so powerful about places like Princeton Record Exchange; when you spend time in them as a teenager, you’re looking for music that will help you figure out who you are.”

Empire Records: The Musical

As a film, Empire Records was poorly received by critics, and its theatrical release lost money, though subsequently it attained cult status. In a typical negative review, Variety described it as a “soundtrack in search of a movie.”

Sarnak counters, “I think the film is amazing in its own right, and I loved it as a kid. My sister got the VHS, and we watched it many times at home. That happened in so many households that it became a cult hit. To honor that feels wonderful.”

She adds, ”Because it has this kind of unusual past, the film allows us to adapt it with some freedom — which I think is important, because if you’re too tied to every word being the same as in the film, then there’s not a lot of space to create musical theater structure that makes a piece really sing. We got to honor the things about the movie that made it special — but then create something that works, completely in its own right, as a musical.”

Sarnak is grateful that Producer Bill Weiner approached her to write the score, because for her it is “ a way to remember a place that felt like home.”

Sarnak reveals that she did not have a prior working relationship with Weiner. “I think he was familiar with my work, and just called my agents. Interestingly enough, I had once been asked by a collaborator, “What movies would you want to adapt?’ I brainstormed a couple, and Empire Records was on my list.” She continues, “About a year later, my agent said, ‘Bill just called, and asked if you would be interested in working on an adaptation of the movie Empire Records.’ I couldn’t believe it! That was a bit of kismet.”

Asked how rehearsals have been going, Sarnak eagerly replies, “It’s going really well!” She reflects that with a new musical, there is a period of considerable “discovery when you put it on its feet.”

Empire Records: The Musical features Tyler McCall as Lucas, an employee who goes to inadvisable lengths to save the store; Damon Daunno as recording star Rex Manning; and Michael Luwaye as Joe, the store manager. The cast also includes Lorna Courtney as Corey; Taylor Iman Jones as Max; Liam Pearce as AJ; Analise Scarpaci as Debra; Eric Wiegand as Mark; and Samantha Williams as Gina.

Sarnak says, “The cast is amazing, and has great energy!” She acknowledges, “We’re still in the process of small rewrites here and there.”

Creative Process

Asked about the process of working with Heikkinen to adapt the film for the musical stage, Sarnak replies, “Carol’s a fantastic collaborator, and I think we came to this project wanting to balance two things: we want to honor the movie as it was, and also dig in and create a narrative act structure that works for the stage — and for musical theater.” She adds that they want the show to exist as an independent, separate entity.

“To that end, we went to outline the whole thing together, pick song spots, and structure each character’s arc — how we might approach the story with the freedom to create what we wanted to create,” she continues. She adds that Heikkinen “was very engaged in making this piece everything it can be — inspired by the film, but also she seemed excited to get back on the page with these characters that she knows so well.”

Sarnak has a variety of methods for drafting songs. Often she hums to herself, either while on a walk, or at home with a guitar or piano, “feeling my way to a melody.”

She considers, “Maybe because I do all those different things, it lets me navigate different moments of inspiration, which helps to not feel like I’m repeating the same style or pattern,” she considers.

Sarnak arranges the music herself; she writes the orchestrations with Music Supervisor Bryan Perri. (Disclosure: as a student at New York University, Perri participated in this columnist’s graduate composition recital.)

As an instrumentalist, Sarnak considers orchestration an integral part of her creative process. But she treasures the collaboration with Perri, “who is such an expert as a pianist, and such a great singer.” She adds that, musically, Perri has viewpoints parallel to hers, but looks at things “maybe from a different direction.” Describing the process as “joyful and collaborative,” she likens their working relationship to “getting to be in a band for a minute.”

Empire Records: The Musical preserves the time setting (the 1990s) of the film. “As a result, the music is a hybrid of inspiration from the 1990s, but modernized,” Sarnak explains. “I love to do that with period pieces; I like to find streams of channels from the time period that lead us to what we are listening to now. That way it feels as if it has a connection to the show’s time and place, but it can hold its own as a score for listeners in 2024.”

She adds, “Personally, it’s a wonderful time period for me to get to write, because I grew up as a child of the 1990s. So it’s music that I know in and out — I can sing you every word of songs from that era — so it felt like a homecoming in that way for me.”

Ultimately, Sarnak decribes Empire Records: The Musical as “a joyful, musical celebration of community and self-discovery through music.” She compares the sense of community in a record store to that of a theater production. “We are thrilled to welcome people into the world of an ‘independent’ (oddball and misfit) crew.”

Sarnak concludes, “To do this show in Princeton feels so incredibly wonderful, because I get to create that sense of nostalgia … in my hometown!”

Directed by Trip Cullman, “Empire Records: The Musical” will run through October 6 at McCarter’s Berlind Theatre. For tickets or additional information, visit www.McCarter.org.