The Greatest of All Time is getting a new biographical Broadway musical that will first lace up its boxing gloves at Chicago’s Nederlander Theatre next spring, with the aim of opening on Broadway during the 2025-26 season.
“Ali,” an officially authorized musical about the famous boxer and civil rights leader Muhammad Ali, is written and directed by Clint Dyer, the deputy artistic director of London’s National Theatre, with an original score by Teddy Abrams, the music director of the Louisville Orchestra in Ali’s hometown. Choreography is by Rich + Tone Talauega, and the co-lyricist and music producer is the Grammy Award-winning Q-Tip.
In a Tuesday telephone interview, producer Richard Willis said that Ali’s widow, Lonnie Ali, was fully behind the show, which is not based on any book but, he said, on “Ali’s own words and points of view.” The storytelling in the mostly through-composed piece will focus on the years from 1960 to 1996, when Ali symbolically passed the torch at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
“You will see his great fights,” Willis said, “and they’ll be staged in an artistic and creative fashion.”
“Ali” was originally announced as premiering this fall in Louisville but that is no longer the case, with Chicago, America’s leading tryout town for Broadway shows, now taking its place.
“Ali” will play from April 22 to May 18 at the Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.; tickets are not yet on sale and casting still has to be announced. More information at alimusical.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com