The creative team behind The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical: George Salazar (Oscar Acosta), Lorinda Lisitza (Virginia Thompson), Joe Iconis (Composer/Lyricist), Jason SweetTooth Williams (Ralph Steadman), and Eric William Morris (Hunter S. Thompson).
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When Hunter S. Thompson died at 67 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2005, his last wish was for his ashes to be shot out of a 150-foot cannon. Johnny Depp, who starred in the film adaptation of Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, paid $3 million to make it happen. “I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out,” Depp said at the funeral.
Thompson exited this world the same way he inhabited it: loudly, controversially, and on his own terms.
A writer and journalist with a close association to Rolling Stone magazine, Thompson rose to prominence in the late 1960s and ’70s with the publication of his novels that remain de rigueur reading for young American stoners and counterculture enthusiasts. As one critic noted, where most journalists try to be a fly on the wall, Thompson made himself a fly in the ointment. His writing style, dubbed “Gonzo journalism,” placed him at the center of stories that blended fact and fiction and seethed with contempt for those in authority, most notably Richard Nixon.
As the 1970s wore on, drugs and depression took over his life, and his output declined. But Thompson’s contribution to American culture and his balls-to-the-wall method of speaking truth to power is undeniable. Today, it’s easy to wonder if his kind of political provocateur is what America needs now—someone whose hyperbole and don’t-give-a-fuck attitude could eclipse even the madness of convicted felon and President Donald Trump.
So where are today’s manic political provocateurs?
It turns out, they’re at Signature Theatre, turning Thompson’s life story into a raucous, rebellious—and totally unsanctioned but please don’t sue them, thank you very much—musical called The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical.
The production is the brainchild of musical wunderkind Joe Iconis, who wrote the music, lyrics, and most of the show’s book. Iconis, true to his name, is a growing icon in American musical theater, having gained a cult following among Gen Z stage enthusiasts with his musical Be More Chill, which went viral on social media in 2015. Word of mouth and a kick-ass cast recording propelled the rock-infused sci-fi play—about teenage nerds who save the world—from a regional theater in New Jersey to a Broadway run that snagged Iconis a Tony nomination for Best Score.
Now, Iconis is back with a musical about Thompson, who is not your typical storybook hero. “I always say that a musical about Hunter S. Thompson is a crazy and terrible idea and therefore I must write a musical about Hunter S. Thompson,” Iconis tells City Paper over chocolate bars (because any conversation about Thompson calls for indulgence). That mentality is clear even in the show’s lengthy title. Getting the rights to incorporate anything from Thompson’s books was prohibitively expensive, so Iconis was advised to do it “unofficially,” meaning he could write what he wanted about the historical aspects of the author’s life, but use no specifics from Thompson’s writing. “When it became clear that the musical had to be unauthorized, it felt like it would be very in the spirit of Hunter to put that in the title,” says Iconis, call the play’s title “a mouthful—it’s cumbersome, it’s affronting, it’s all the things Hunter was. I really, passionately love it.”
One thing you should know about Iconis is that he brings his friends everywhere he goes. Half of the cast of Signature’s production are members of the “Joe Iconis Family,” an informal group of artists who have collaborated with Iconis on creative projects for decades, attended each other’s weddings, and, in the case of Lorinda Lisitza, who plays Thompson’s mother, babysat each other’s kids. “You don’t stick around for 25 years if you don’t feel absolute love, onstage and off, for the people you are working with,” says Lisitza.
“There really is no line between our art and our personal lives,” shares Jason SweetTooth Williams, who plays Thompson’s longtime illustrator Ralph Steadman in Untitled. “Everyone who is part of this collective is someone Joe saw something in.”
As a young writer new in the New York theater scene in the early 2000s, Iconis found creative ways to make his mark. Despite not knowing anyone, he performing concerts around the city in hopes of gaining a following. He also attended other people’s shows, and if he liked them, he’d ask them to collaborate with him. Twenty years later, the Joe Iconis Family is a known commodity in Manhattan, made up of a rotating group of 60 to 90 artists. But in the early days, Iconis recalls, “I was just doing shows that no one asked for … and begging people to come.”
Iconis has come a long way since then. Because another thing to know about Iconis is that his rock-infused compositional stylings and out-of-the-box storytelling have made him one of the most anticipated new musical theater writers of the 21st century. But writing about Thompson—a walking contradiction, even in his prime (Thompson loved guns, but was a vocal opponent to the Vietnam War), who spent the final 30 years of his life in a downward spiral—hasn’t been without its challenges.
“All of the things that make him problematic were why I wanted to write about him,” Iconis explains. “I found his sloppiness fascinating.” In Untitled, Iconis worked hard not to sugarcoat Thompson’s many flaws. “The show really blatantly asks if the guy was worth it. He did all these great things but he also did bad things so: What do you think?”
As a storyteller, Iconis has always been attracted to the bad guy, the outsider, the Hunter S. Thompsons of society. And, like Thompson, he’s not setting out to make art that appeals to everyone. Sure, popularity is good (his song “Broadway, Here I Come!” became a mainstay in the musical theater canon when Jeremy Jordan performed it on the NBC series Smash), but true Iconi-philes know that the secret sauce to his work is his refusal to modulate his interests to appease an industry that is, more often than not, dictated by that pesky need for revenue and box office success.
Instead, Iconis’ unique outlook and talent make space for new themes, sounds, and explorations. “I love classical musicals but I’ve always responded to shows that are outliers,” Iconis says. “For me, that’s a great way to use music. To be able to get inside the head of Hunter S. Thompson and try to understand why he was the way he was.”
According to his colleagues, Iconis’ excitement is contagious. “As a writer, Joe has this incredible agility to get out of his own way so his work can shift and transform,” says playwright Dani Stoller, Iconis’ script assistant on the Thompson project. “It’s incredible to have so much ingenuity and drive in a person who is also a consummate collaborator.”
William Morris, who plays Thompson, agrees. “Every time there’s a role he wants me to play, it just fits. He sees things in us before the rest of us see them.”
In shaping the musical, Iconis transformed Thompson into the narrator able to share his journey with audiences through warped recollections told over the last few hours of his life. The show takes us back to the years Thompson was most prolific, from John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 (which led to the publication of his first novel, Hell’s Angels), to his account of the Nixon vs. George McGovern presidential election in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. This nine-year window coincides with the most volatile period of the Civil Rights era, allowing Iconis to weave fact and fiction into his musical in the same way that Thompson enjoyed blending political analysis with wild flights of fancy.
Surrounding Thompson onstage are figures from his life, most of whom are played by Iconis’ collaborators, including George Salazar of Be More Chill fame. In this, Salazar’s second main-stage collaboration with Iconis, he plays Oscar Acosta, the drug-addled lawyer who accompanied Thompson on the road trip that became immortalized in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Salazar’s solo number in Untitled is shaping up to be another star turn. Salazar spent a lot of time researching Acosta, a Chicano lawyer who shared both Thompson’s passion for social justice and struggles with addiction. Today, Salazar is proud of the work he and Iconis put into fleshing out Acosta’s character. “The biggest tragedy about Oscar Acosta is that the fictionalized version of him lives at the forefront of everyone’s minds and the actual work he did is often forgotten,” Salazar says. “This musical is the first time Oscar is being depicted for who he is and not just as a caricature in Fear and Loathing.”
Iconis’ motivation to develop the show has changed since the La Jolla Playhouse first commissioned him to work on it in 2005. “It started out with my fascination with Thompson as a person,” Iconis says. “But over time, as our country has changed, this felt like a way to write about current events without literally writing about Donald Trump.”
Using Thompson as a vehicle, Iconis is able to reflect on current American politics through the lens of another time. “The way Thompson wrote about Nixon, you could assume the quotes were about Trump. You don’t have to change a word,” he says. Iconis hopes that reminding today’s audiences of one of America’s great agitators will inspire others to advocate for their beliefs. “I like to think that doing this show is our form of disruption and protest,” he says. “Where are the agitators? Let it be you. Let it be all of us.”
The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, with music and lyrics by Joe Iconis, book by Joe Iconis and Gregory S. Moss, and directed by Christopher Ashley, runs through July 13 at Signature Theatre. sigtheatre.org. $47–$112.