Red Sox musical swings for the fences

Move over Damn Yankees - another baseball-themed musical is stepping up to the plate.

Red Sox Nation, a musical tragedy about the Boston Red Sox, will have its premiere in May 2010 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The musical will be directed by A.R.T.'s artistic director, Diane Paulus, who's also helming the revival of Hair on Broadway.

Playwright Richard Dresser, a Massachusetts native and Brown University graduate known for his social comedies, is writing the book. (His lone Broadway credit is the book for the Beach Boys jukebox musical Good Vibrations, which ran for 94 performances, closing on April 24, 2005.)

The music and lyrics are by brothers Robert Reale and Willie Reale, who collaborated on the book and score for A Year With Frog and Toad, which ran on Broadway for 73 performances in 2003.

Here's the description from A.R.T's Web site:

"Red Sox Nation is an exhilarating blend of fact, fiction, and the mystical power of the game. It traces the origin of the Curse to a collision of three orphaned souls: Johnny O’Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Sox; his idol, the man-child Babe Ruth; and Daisy Wyatt, a dazzling African-American blues singer and the love of Johnny’s life."

Okay, it's probably not going to become a second Damn Yankees but it does sound intriguing.