Rick Elice
Jersey Boys, Rick’s first Broadway credit, co-authored with Marshall Brickman, won the Tony Award®, the Grammy Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical, and is in the record books as the twelfth longest-running show in Broadway history. With Marshall Brickman and Andrew Lippa, he wrote The Addams Family, starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. For the past five years, The Addams Family has been the number one or number two most licensed musical in North America. His first play, Peter and the Starcatcher, directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, received more Tony Award® nominations than any American play in Broadway history, and won five 2012 Tony Awards®. For the past six years, the play has consistently been in the top five most produced plays in North America. Rick also wrote the double Tony Award®-winning The Cher Show for Broadway, directed by Jason Moore; the world premiere at Paper Mill Playhouse of a new musical, My Very Own British Invasion, directed by Jerry Mitchell; the world premiere at The Old Globe of a new musical, Dog and Pony, with music and lyrics by Michael Patrick Walker; and the world premiere of a new musical, Turn of the Century, co-authored with Marshall Brickman, directed by Tommy Tune. Current projects include The Princess Bride for Disney, and Smash for Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg with Bob Martin; Monopoly, for Hasbro, with David Rossmer and Dan Lipton; and Mad Season, with Rob Thomas, Matt Serletic and Matt Walden of Matchbox Twenty, directed by Schele Williams. Rick also adapted Sara Gruen’s popular novel Water for Elephants for the stage with the acclaimed theater collective, PigPen, directed by Jessica Stone; and writing an entirely original musical (!) based on the rivalry between Darwin and Roget, love, death, madness and the creation of Roget’s Thesaurus, with 2021 Ed Kleban Award winner, Benjamin Scheuer. Rick’s book, Finding Roger, An Improbably Theatrical Love Story, a tribute to his late husband, Roger Rees, is published by Kingswell.