Arts & Entertainment
Queer creator blends Shakespeare with iconic music of Pat Benatar
Could LA’s production of ‘Invincible’ make it to Broadway?
For millions of GenX-ers, the music of Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo – Benatar’s longtime lead guitarist, collaborator, and producing partner, and her husband since 1982 – has been an iconic generational touchstone for more than four decades. This might be especially true for queer GenXers, who found inspiration during their formative years in the defiant spirit that resonated through many of the duo’s songs.
One of those queer GenXers was Bradley Bredeweg, the out co-creator of another queer touchstone, television’s “The Fosters,” which became a hit for five seasons on FreeForm with its story of a lesbian couple raising five adopted children. Now, Bredeweg – a self-described “theater kid” – is helping to bring Benatar and Giraldo’s music to a new generation of rebellious youth with “Invincible,” a new musical that intricately weaves the couple’s legendary catalogue with inspired new songs to re-imagine Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” for the 21st century.
“When I got into writing for television, I realized that I missed the equal exchange that happens between the people on the stage and the audience,” explains Bredeweg, who spoke with the Blade ahead of his show’s Nov. 22 opening at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Center for the Performing Arts. “I love film and television, obviously, I’m so grateful for it, but after a couple of years of doing it, I was like, ‘I miss that inner theater child, so I’m gonna moonlight.’”
The result of his “moonlighting” turns Shakespeare’s classic Verona setting into a modern, war-torn metropolis, and places his timeless tale of star-crossed lovers in a time of great transformation. Love and equality are forced to battle for survival as a newly elected chancellor works to return the city to its traditional roots and destroy a progressive resistance that is trying to imagine peace in a divided world – and if you think that sounds familiar, it’s by design. Its current run at the Wallis is its world premiere, but if things go as hoped, this is just the first step toward Broadway.
According to Bredeweg, however, it’s far from the beginning of his show’s journey.
“About 12 years ago, I realized I hadn’t read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ since high school and decided to read it again,” he tells us. “The next day I had to take a road trip – this was back in the era when I still had a CD book in my car – and I came across the “Best of” album of Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, so I popped it in and started driving. And because the story was obviously fresh in my head, I was listening to all these songs and realizing that if you line them up a certain way they totally tell the tale of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ I wrote a first draft a couple of weeks later and then I just put it away and forgot about it.”
Much later, in 2015, he walked into a Los Feliz bar called the Rockwell (“It was this really cool kind of spot that we don’t have a lot of in LA, because we’re not a theatrical town”), where cabaret performances were sometimes mounted by visiting Broadway talent and Jeff Goldblum would do a gig every Wednesday night. Inspired by the vibe, he suddenly remembered, “this thing I had come up with all those years ago” and impulsively pitched the idea of putting it on to the bar’s manager. I said, ‘I’ve got this crazy idea where I want to combine Shakespeare with Pat Benatar,’ and she said, ‘That’s insane, but I’m a huge fan of your show and I love it, so let’s do it.’”
This early incarnation (then called “Love is a Battlefield”) was an unprecedented hit, enjoying a six-month run to sold out houses – that is, until Benatar and Giraldo’s manager attended a performance and recorded a video of the whole thing on his iPhone. He showed it to Benatar and Giraldo, and they were intrigued; but at the time, unbeknownst to Bredeweg, they were working on developing their own life story as a musical using their songs, so they sent a “cease and desist” letter to the Rockwell and the show was forced to shut down.
“It was heartbreaking, for all of us,” says Bredeweg, “because we knew we had something with real potential.”
Then, a year later, he got a call from a producer who told him Benatar and Giraldo wanted him to come to New York and discuss his musical.
“Of course, I said yes and got myself there immediately. We took a meeting on their tour bus, and we started talking about the musical they were developing, and suddenly we all started to move in the direction of doing ‘Love is a Battlefield.’ By the end of it we were all laughing about how we had started out with a ‘cease and desist’ order and here we were talking about coming together to do a show.”
In part, says Bredeweg, the couple was convinced to change course by their discussion of the proliferation of so-called “jukebox musicals” that have increasingly populated Broadway in recent years.
“We talked about how they have a shelf life, especially if they’re focused on a specific artist. They have a built-in audience, but beyond that, how can they stand the test of time? The real test of a timeless musical is if, in 40 years, every high school is doing it. I think that’s why we went back to using their iconic music to reinvent this epic, timeless tale.”
Another part of the appeal was how aptly the couple’s songs fit into Shakespeare’s classic – a coincidence, perhaps, but one that might be better described as synchronicity.
“When Pat and Neil met back in the late ‘70s it was supposed to just be a working relationship, but they fell head over heels in love with each other,” Bredeweg says. “When I got close to them, they told me they had been called the ‘Romeo and Juliet of the music world’ because the labels and managers and PR people were trying to break them up. They wanted Pat to stand on their own and Neil to just be her producing partner, and so much of what the two of them were creating at that time was about that struggle, about fighting that music industry system and saying, ‘let us figure this out for ourselves.’ That’s why so much of their music works inside of this story.”
For Bredeweg, the chance to realize his vision struck an intensely personal chord, too.
“I was always obsessed with the classics, but as a gay kid growing up in the ‘80s, I knew I felt different from everyone else, and as much as I loved them, I couldn’t really ‘attach’ to any character inside them. Nothing felt familiar to me, everything was from the point of view of a white cisgender person – and I always had these dreams, if I ever had any say, that I would love to tackle these classics in a different way and reposition them for a more diverse audience.”
In keeping with this mission, “Invincible” doesn’t just make Verona into a more modern city, but a more diverse one as well. The Capulet and Montague houses are run by the women, whose husbands are both dead; Romeo’s chum Benvolio is nonbinary, and falls in love with Juliet’s nurse; Juliet’s cousin Tybalt is secretly in love with her would-be husband, Paris; Paris himself is the city’s new chancellor, seeking the marriage as a means to control the vast Capulet fortune and deploy it to shore up his political power. In Bredeweg’s updated take on the tale, it’s a story about powerful men with powerful motives, with a matriarchy fighting against the traditional patriarchy and a younger generation trying to take control of its own destiny – and to ensure that it includes the freedom to love who they want.
“That’s obviously something the queer community can really understand,” says Bredweg. “We’ve been there and done that, the fight for marriage equality is all about that. It’s very much at the center of the show, and it was a big reason why I wanted to tackle the story, why I’ve rewritten so many characters with queer identities – taking these figures we thought we knew and giving them a more modern point of view.”
“Our culture is shifting in such huge ways,” he continues. “It goes back to my experience of not being able to find myself in these old tales. We are looking at our past, and pieces of art or the written world, or things in our politics, and we’re trying to reinvent these pinnacle moments in a way to make sure that history doesn’t always repeat, to move forward in different directions that are better for all of us. Especially the younger generations – they’ve stepped into this world where they’ve had no say in how chaotic things feel, and they are trying to take control of their identities and their path forward. That’s really what’s at the heart of our show.”
“Invincible” is not, of course, the first time “Romeo and Juliet” has been deconstructed and rebuilt as a musical; apart from the obvious example of “West Side Story,” the recent London import “& Juliet,” now a hot ticket on Broadway, presents an alternative version of the story in which the title character doesn’t kill herself, set to the music of pop songwriter Max Martin – responsible for hits from Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and Céline Dion, among others.
Bredeweg isn’t worried about the competition.
“I never think about that kind of thing,” he tells us. “There’s always room for interpretation with classics of this stature. There’s space for both.”
His production, of course, has the added advantage of showcasing the music of two deeply beloved icons whose recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has catapulted their names back into the public arena in a big way – not that they were ever very far out of it.
For Bredeweg, though, the Benatar/Giraldo connection has always been much more than just a way to make his show marketable. It’s the whole reason “Invincible” even exists.
“Pat captured my heart as a young gay kid for obvious reasons. There was something about her music, and her energy and messaging.
“It made me feel that if someone as powerful as her could exist, then I could, too.”
“Invincible” continues its run at the Wallis until Dec. 18. For tickets and more details, visit their website.
a&e features
Tickets on sale for chef Patrick O’Connell’s book launch event
Sept. 18 kickoff to feature José Andrés, Tom Sietsema
Acclaimed chef Patrick O’Connell is preparing to publish his new memoir, “Main, Middle & Gay” in September and he’s launching the book with an event on Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. at Lisner Auditorium featuring Chef José Andrés and former Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema.
Tickets for the event go on sale Tuesday, July 21 at Ticketmaster; prices start at $55.
O’Connell, who’s gay, is the pioneering Michelin-starred chef and longtime proprietor of the Inn at Little Washington. He spoke with the Blade about the September event and the launch of his first memoir.
“I’ve known [Andrés and Sietsema] for more than 25 years and I have great respect for them,” O’Connell said. “I felt that it would allow us to add a different dimension rather than just have an interviewer. The chemistry will be fun and lively and unpredictable and exciting. I think we’re all different personalities and we’ll compliment each other.”
O’Connell has published cookbooks but this is his first memoir. The event will feature a short film that will highlight his work and the Inn.
“What I hope to do with the event is bring the book to life visually,” he said. “So we’re producing a short film that will be part of it. Most of the audience will not have read the book so it’ll give them a visual flavor of the book. It parallels the evolution of American cuisine over 50 years. It’s a rare perspective to be in the trenches for that long.”
The book’s title refers to the location of the garage on the corner of Main, Middle, and Gay streets in Washington, Va., where he launched his restaurant that became an international culinary destination.
The Blade will publish the rest of its wide-ranging interview with O’Connell in September in conjunction with the book’s release.
Arts & Entertainment
Sci-fi has long been at vanguard of LGBTQ representation
Story lines now criticized as ‘woke’ is weird
Since I was a teenager, I have liked sci-fi because of the depth with which it explores social issues. At the time, I didn’t know that I was autistic and queer, so I couldn’t see myself in other autistic and queer people. Instead, I saw myself in androids, mutants, telepaths, and sometimes aliens who were portrayed as minorities persecuted by the human majority. It was a universal language for talking about alienation, systemic discrimination, conversion therapy, segregation, and internalized self-hatred.
Now, when so many sci-fi stories are being criticized online as “woke,” it seems weird for me. This is especially true when we are talking about franchises, such as the British TV series “Doctor Who” and American franchise “Star Trek,” both of which have always been remarkably progressive by the standards of their own time.
Let’s take a closer look at “Doctor Who.”
In June 2026, the BBC cancelled the planned Christmas special, saying that viewers would have to wait longer for the next season after internal studio issues, and now the BBC is looking for new production partners. “Doctor Who” is the longest-running science fiction television series in the world, originally airing from 1963 to 1989 before returning in 2005. The future of the franchise is currently unclear, and many people online immediately began blaming “wokeness” for what had happened to their favorite show.
After all, the Doctor, an alien Time Lord who can regenerate and literally change faces, had traditionally been played by white men. But the last, Fifteenth Doctor was played by Ncuti Gatwa, a Black Scottish-Rwandan actor who has publicly identified as queer (and the doctor himself was first presented as queer character after a queer romantic episode where he kissed a man), while the Thirteenth Doctor was played for three seasons by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to portray the Doctor. In 2023, the series also introduced Rose Noble, a trans feminine nonbinary teenager and supportive character played by transgender English actress Yasmin Finney.
But despite popular stereotypes online, “Doctor Who” did not suddenly “go woke.” The program has existed in two main eras: the classic series, which aired from 1963 to1989, and the modern revival, which has been broadcast on BBC One since 2005.
Even in the 1960s, one of the program’s earliest stories, “The Daleks” (1963–64), presented an obvious allegory for fascism, racial purity, bigotry and the horrors of war. Throughout the classic era, the Doctor frequently opposed militarism, authoritarian governments, and dictatorships. Many fans have also pointed to moments of queer coding and subtext throughout the classic series.
However, openly queer characters appeared as soon as the modern revival began.
The 2005 revival introduced Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, one of the first openly queer recurring characters in the “Doctor Who” universe. He openly flirted with people regardless of their gender and later became the lead character of the spin-off series “Torchwood.” “Torchwood” went even further with LGBTQ representation, featuring multiple queer characters, including trans and nonbinary characters whose identities were treated as a normal part of the story.
“Doctor Who” has always been remarkably progressive for its time. The franchise doesn’t suddenly change its values, it’s always been “woke.”
The same happened with the American franchise “Star Trek.”
It is widely known as one of the most openly left-wing and progressive television franchises ever broadcast. The original series, which aired from 1966-1969, was created during the Cold War and featured the utopian United Federation of Planets, a society without poverty or money that can be characterised as socialist or even communist. It also featured Lt. Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, a Black woman serving as a highly respected bridge officer at a time when Black women weren’t portrayed in positions of authority on American television. The series also included one of the first interracial kisses in modern American television, between Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Uhura in the 1968 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” a moment that had a significant cultural impact.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the franchise, said that he had wanted to include openly queer characters as well, but believed it would have been impossible to keep the show on the air because it had already pushed social boundaries in so many other ways.
Today, many viewers — including Elon Musk — claim that “Star Trek” has only recently become “woke.” In reality, I think it actually became less radical than the original series. Even queer characters are not a recent addition to the franchise. One of the earliest major queer characters appeared in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993–1999): the Trill officer Jadzia Dax, played by Terry Farrell. In the 1995 episode “Rejoined,” she shared one of the first same-sex kisses in the history of the franchise.
However, for some reason, it was the openly gay couple Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz) in “Star Trek: Discovery” (2017–2024), together with the trans Trill character Gray Tal, played by trans actor Ian Alexander, that triggered a major backlash among conservative parts of the fandom. That backlash reached another peak with “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” which features the canonically gay Klingon cadet Jay-Den Kraag. The actor has spoken about receiving abuse and threats because of the role, despite the fact that there was nothing especially ideological about his character. He was simply a gay character whose sexuality was only one aspect of who he was. In fact, considering the ideals of the original “Star Trek,” I was more surprised that the franchise still includes relatively few trans or polyamorous characters, and that they are not part of the lead cast. After all, the franchise was created to imagine a future that was ahead of its time.
So why do conservatives and anti-LGBTQ people continue to watch franchises that have always been deliberately progressive? And why do they keep claiming that these shows have only recently “gone woke”?
A more logical explanation is that parts of the audience have become less willing to accept the same kinds of progressive ideas that these franchises have embraced for decades. In other words, it is not the shows that fundamentally changed. Some long-time viewers have become more conservative than they were in their youth, while newer conservative audiences have joined them and begun criticizing franchises without knowing their real history.
In many ways, geeks have changed more than these shows have. Sci-fi hasn’t “gone woke.” Some of its fans have simply become less comfortable with the same progressive values these franchises have promoted for decades.
JR.’s Bar held a “RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars” watch party followed by a live drag show on Friday, July 17. The Vitamin C weekly drag show was hosted by Citrine with performers Brooke N Hyman and Rosie Beret.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
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