A Musical Comedy With Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong? Sign Me Up, Schmigadoon!

A musical show where two people get trapped in a musical and can only escape when they find true love? I’m in! Schmigadoon!, which is way too close to Brigadoon, which is probably the point but also detrimental for my spelling, is a look at love and musicals and what would happen if you got stuck in a musical until you figured your stuff out.

Starring Cecily Strong, Keegan-Michael Key, Alan Cumming, Ariana DeBose, Aaron Tveit, and more, this is a musical theatre lover’s dream! I say this as a musical theatre lover who loves to see Aaron Tveit on my television screen! But the trailer sets up a world where you have to find out whether or not you are truly in love through song and dance, and so, again, I ask: Who went into my brain and plucked this dream out?

And for the benefit of my friends, myself, and the staff of the Mary Sue: Here is Aaron Tveit in the trailer.

My favorite part of the trailer comes from Cecily Strong’s character saying that no one dies in a musical, which is hilarious because I’m pretty sure all my favorite musical either have people die or there’s a dead person in it? I guess the exception is The Last Five Years, but that’s about the death of a marriage so …

As we all know, people die in musicals all the time. We love to kill people to a boppy showtune. Just look at Oklahoma! That loves to kill people and then sing proudly about being from the state of Oklahoma! (There’s a reason I love the most recent revivial of this show only.) But the trailer is filled with little nods to musicals of old as well as straight up naming them. Strong lists musicals like Oklahoma! and Carousel and then West Side Story as musicals where people died, and she doesnt even get past the 1950s. (I love you, Broadway, and your love of just killing people in musicals.)

But it’s nice to see Cecily Strong, especially in this. On Saturday Night Live, I can always tell when Strong had her hand in a sketch because of the musical references. One of my favorite sketches was when Cecily Strong and Chris Pine did a Sunday in the Park With George number that was so niche, I think my friend group was the only ones who really appreciated how beautiful it was. So watching her in a television show with Broadway powerhouses like Kristin Chenoweth? Absolutely incredible.

Schmigadoon! hits Apple TV on July 16th, and I can’t wait to spend my summer singing along and wishing that I could go to a musical world and fall in love. No really, can Alan Cumming and this strange little town trap me?

(via Collider, image: Apple TV)

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Rachel Leishman

Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell's dog, Brisket. Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.

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