For the next four weeks, Northwestern University will be debuting the new musical Not Wanted on the Voyage, written by Neil Bartram and Brian Hill, who were responsible for the warmly received yet incredibly short lived The Story of my Life.
According to press notes, the show is a “provocative new musical about an ordinary family faced with extraordinary circumstances. Secrets lie just beneath the surface in this darkly funny, modern re-imagining of the Great Flood — the first time the world ended.”
It features a student cast and a creative team of Tony-Winning talents, including set designer Eugene Lee (Wicked), choreographer Maija Garcia (associate choreographer for Fela!) and orchestrator Christopher Jahnke (Memphis).
And the video preview looks quite promising:
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it due to my hectic schedule as of late, but you should. Not Wanted on the Voyage runs July 16 – August 8 in the Ethel M. Barber Theatre at Northwestern University. More information here >
Chicago Theatre Addict 
Most of the cast are good friends of my son–I’ll be seeing it, possibly more than once. NU spares no expense with the stage values for these student-cast works–you should go!
The cast is brilliant as is the staging and the music. Sadly the book is an unholy mess. Too much good stuff in the source novel perhaps, they just couldn’t bear to leave any of it out. But, I’ll trim down my many questions to this: PLEASE will someone just explain what the fish casserole, the blue body paint and the dead dog had to do with anything.
I agree with Charles. I enjoyed parts of it (some very talented cast members and incredible production values), but I too was left with a lot of unanswered questions. I ordered the book off of Amazon to try and piece everything together, but they for a stage musical, they definitely needed to focus the story more than they did.
I agree with the two above comments. The musical wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. If you asked me to summarize the story–or to tell you what it was trying to get across–I wouldn’t be able to. The performers did as well as they could with what they had, but it was quite confusing. I didn’t know it was based off of a book. I might have to get it.