Summer Of ’69 Returns as Musical “A Walk on the Moon”

Hot fun in the summertime.

In 1969, that meant Woodstock. In 2026, it means an off-Broadway show about when a counterculture music festival turned a pasture in Bethel, NY, into the world’s most renowned musical event and changed one woman’s life forever.

Pamela Gray’s “A Walk on the Moon” has hit the New York stage as a musical scored by AnnMarie Milazzo, directed by Sheryl Kaller, produced by Ruth and Stephen Hendel, and stars Talia Suskauer as Pearl, Max Chernin as her husband Marty, Sophie Pollono as her daughter Alison, Sam Gravitte as Walker the Blouse Man, Andréa Burns as Marty’s mother Lillian, and Oscar Williams as Alison’s boyfriend Ross.

Gray, who wrote the much-loved film released in 1999 and starred Diane Lane, Liev Schreiber, Viggo Mortensen, Tovah Feldshuh, and Anna Paquin, wrote the book and additional lyrics for the show.

Says the noted screenwriter, “The music in the musical is like the movie: the voice of the 1950s, a more musical theater voice for the bungalow colony people, and for the younger generation, more ‘60s-oriented sounding music. In terms of characters singing emotionally driven songs in a musical theater way, they both work together. And the younger generation gets a really rousing applause after they sing their protest song.”

With the distinctly American-Jewish Catskills bungalow colonies and the upheaval of the times as its backdrop, the story takes us on Pearl Kantrowitz’s journey from weary Brooklyn mother and housewife whose life is turned upside down when she has an affair with a free-spirited blouse salesman. Or as Gray describes it: “A woman feeling like she hadn’t really lived her life, but didn’t know that, and suddenly realizes it.”

The stage adaptation reflects Gray’s reputation for character-driven, female-centric stories about coming into one’s own thanks to resilience and self-discovery.

“I have a different view of what makes a woman a hero in a story,” says the playwright. “There’s this model of telling screenplays through the view of the hero’s journey. The heroine’s journey is a different one. There’s a slower progression.

“I’m really interested in stories about ordinary people who wind up doing extraordinary things. Pearl doesn’t change the world. But she does something earth-shattering for her. Yes, she caused damage to her family, but found parts of herself she wouldn’t have found otherwise. And not every woman from Brooklyn would have done that and taken that risk. All the women in screenplays I’ve written take these giant steps and giant leaps. I’m very drawn to that.”

After 25 years of audiences enjoying the movie, the stage version proves there is room for evolution.

“The musical is having its bat mitzvah; we’re in our year 13. That’s how long it took us to get to New York,” jokes Gray.

When she first conceived the screenplay, the writer wanted the world of the bungalow colonies to be as she knew them, which was a far cry from the Catskills of Dirty Dancing. “That’s what the young people with fathers who were doctors and lawyers did. We couldn’t afford the hotels. In retrospect, they were shtetls, the world of working-class Jews, where the dads went home on Sunday night. During the week, it was this matriarchal world, this remarkable world that was part of my life for so many years.”

The stage version, as compared to the film, has a more obvious feminist tone. “We’ve got a song now, it’s the women reacting to the book ‘The Feminine Mystique,’ which the Pearl of the movie would not have known about,” Gray says. “The women sing about the class privilege Betty Friedan is speaking from.”

The activist references chauffeurs and women wasting time matching slipcovers. “Pearl is intrigued,” says Gray, “but the other women are thinking, ‘Chauffeurs? I don’t even have a car. Who’s got slipcovers? We use plastic, or a schemata to cover up the stains.’ It’s just an interesting slant that we didn’t have before.”

The musical also gives opportunities for more mother-daughter interactions.

Also, due to the political climate of 2026, the show, according to Gray, has amped up the Jewishness for the musical.

“There is more anti-Semitism now; it’s terrifying. But the challenge was to not feel forced into the show. The natural way to have it come out is, again, you’ve got this younger generation, Pearl’s 15-year-old daughter Alison, who thinks, ‘Oh, anti-Semitism, that’s from the old days. We’re past that.’ For the people who lived it, that’s not true. It still exists.” And so her grandmother sets her straight.

As far as Millennials and Gen Xers relating to a story that took place a quarter century before they were born, Gray offers, “I think that younger people seeing the show seem to know a little bit more about the ‘60s than I expected. That was a time period where there were protests and where young people hated the president and really were afraid he was going to blow up the world. There are so many similarities between the [1960s] generation’s feelings about Nixon and right now that I think [today’s generation] is connecting to it.”

For the fans of the movie, A Walk on the Moon: The Musical is a chance to reunite with characters they love, and for those witnessing the story anew, it’s entertainment with a history lesson thrown in. Either way, you’ll leave singing.

A Walk on the Moon at the Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46^th Street. Now through August 22. Tickets are on sale now.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel “The Last Single Woman In New York City.”