If there was any hope that 2019 would be less surreal and random than 2018, or even 2017, or perhaps 2016, those hopes will surely be dashed by this news: As per Deadline, Michael C. Hall is doing a Skittles-produced and -themed musical on Broadway on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a real piece of Mad Libs news, and it appears to be real — unless it isn’t. But if it isn’t, what is it
Well, it’s a commercial, for one thing — a live-action commercial and a commercial for the commercial, which you can watch above. The meta ad features the Six Feet Under and Dexter alum, not to mention occasional Broadway star, talking to his therapist, trying, mostly in vain, to explain what this Skittles musical is. He swears it’s real, and that it will be a one-time-only show that’s a 30-minute ad that you have to pay to see. She doesn’t understand. And then a scarecrow shows up.
Far as so-crazy-it-might-just-work stunts go, this is pretty out-there, and, whaddaya know, we might even suddenly feel the hankering for some Skittles. But not only does it appear to be real, some of its proceeds will go to the charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
This is not the first time the sugary candy has done something good. When Donald Trump Jr. bizarrely compared Syrian refugees to a poisoned bowl of Skittles, the company denounced his statement, saying, “Skittles are candy. Refugees are people.” Sometimes confectionary brands owned by large corporations can do good! Or they’re simply trying to win progressive people’s money! Either way!
Anyway, the musical is called, appropriately enough, Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical, and it will go down — again, one-time only — on Super Bowl Sunday, February 3 at 1pm at the 1,500-seat Town Hall theater in Times Square. Tickets range from $30 to $205, which you can nab on Ticketmaster. If that sounds steep, consider that not only do they have Hall in the lead, but the book was written by a real playwright, Will Eno, whose most recent production, Thom Pain (based on nothing), starred — that’s right — Michael C. Hall.
Till then, longtime fans of Michael C. Hall can await his return to the stage by watching his out-of-nowhere dance in the 2009 Gerard Butler dystopian thriller Gamer.