For a while now, the idea of The Flaming Lips adapting their 2002 record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots to the small stage has been thrown around, though it looks as though they are ready to get the ball rolling, announcing an official premiere date.
The Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots musical will run from November 6th to December 16th at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, under the watchful gaze of direction company The Des McAnuff. Though the production will be named after that particular album, you can expect to hear tunes from The Soft Bulletin and At War with the Mystics, and the band has also promised multimedia stage effects.
The show will include the writing stylings of Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) so it is already being held in high regard. Frontman Wayne Coyne coined the musical as “hokey and wonderful and poignant and powerful”. You can read a little blurb from La Jolla Playhouse website below:
Yoshimi is a young Japanese artist facing the battle of her life: the battle for her life. Adrift from her family and lover, Yoshimi journeys alone into a fantastical robot-world where she wages a war with fate. Will her will to survive be powerful enough to master the evil forces that threaten to destroy her? Inspired by the whimsical and psychedelic music of Wayne Coyne and The Flaming Lips, this world premiere musical integrates music from several albums (‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’, ‘The Soft Bulletin’, ‘At War with the Mystics’) with Coyne and multiple Tony Award-winning director Des McAnuff’s poignant, humanistic story about the triumph of love and optimism over the mystery of our own mortality. The result is a dazzling, multi-media experience that offers an allegory of our modern battle for progressive thought and individuality in the face of blind acceptance and conformity.
