Saturday Night Fever (musical): History and Key Facts

Saturday Night Fever is a 1998 jukebox musical based on the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever. Its book is by Nan Knighton (in collaboration with Arlene Phillips, Paul Nicholas, and Robert Stigwood), and the songs mostly consist of songs that were featured in the film's soundtrack, which in turn were mostly written and performed by the Bee Gees.

The musical focuses on Tony Manero, an Italian-American Brooklyn youth whose weekend is spent at the local discotheque. There he luxuriates in the admiration of the crowd and a growing relationship with Stephanie Mangano, and can temporarily forget the realities of his life, including a dead-end job in a paint store and his gang of deadbeat friends. In an effort to make it a family-friendly show, many of the film's darker elements, including references to racial conflict, drug use, and violence, were eliminated from the plot.

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