Bye Bye Birdie: History and Key Facts

Bye Bye Birdie is a stage musical with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams, with a book by Michael Stewart.

Originally titled Let's Go Steady, it is set in 1958. The play's book was influenced by Elvis Presley being drafted into the US Army in 1957. The rock star character's name, "Conrad Birdie", is word play on the name of Conway Twitty. Twitty later had a long career as a country music star but, in the late 1950s, he was one of Presley's rock 'n' roll rivals.

The original 1960–61 Broadway production was a Tony Award–winning success. It spawned a London production and several major revivals, a sequel, a 1963 film, and a 1995 television production. The show also became a popular choice for high school and college productions due to its variable cast size and large proportion of ensemble numbers.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Bye Bye Birdie by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.