As has become custom, this week Mel Larch shines her Curtain Call spotlight on the winner of the Tony Award for best musical, and this year it’s The Outsiders.

Wednesday afternoon’s Curtain Call on The AIR follows an encore of a recent Beatles Blast (which airs at 2PM).

Adapted from S.E. Hinton’s seminal book and Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic film, The Outsiders features a book by Adam Rapp with Justin Levine, and music and lyrics by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay & Zach Chance) and Justin Levine. Mel will present highlights of the original Broadway cast album on this week’s show.

Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1967, Ponyboy Curtis, his best friend Johnny Cade and their Greaser family of “outsiders” battle with their affluent rivals, the Socs. This new Broadway musical navigates the complexities of self-discovery as the Greasers dream about who they want to become in a world that may never accept them.

Not everybody watching the Tony Awards felt that The Outsiders was really the best musical, but being the underdog is sort of the theme of the show. To be honest, both Mel and I found the music to be lackluster, and neither of us had any emotional connection to the book or the movie. We were both rooting for Water For Elephants, which blows The Outsiders out of the water, musically.  Most “experts” believed that the Alicia Keys musical, Hell’s Kitchen, was a shoe-in. Such is the ways of the awards shows.

Next week Mel plans to look at the winner for best play, Stereophonic, which wouldn’t normally be featured on Curtain Call, but this particular play has lots of great songs in it. The week after that, she’ll present highlights from the Tony Award winner for best revival of a musical, Merrily We Roll Along.

But this Wednesday at 3 PM, Curtain Call will let you sample The Outsiders.  You can tune in at the website, or you could just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.