No New NPR Car Talks–But a New Musical

Earlier this week, NPR announced that the Magliozzi brothers—you may know them as Click and Clack—are retiring. Stations will air favorite segments of Car Talk as reruns.

I’m not all that interested in cars, but I’ll miss the show, which to me was always less about cars than relationships—between the bantering brothers, between callers and their spouses.

And that may have been what inspired Wesley Savick, a professor at Suffolk University in Boston, to create a musical around the show. Last year, SU and the Underground Railway Theater produced the story of Rusty Fenders, owner of a terminally ill ’93 Kia, Miata C. LaChassi, and the Wizard of Cahs. Car Talk: The Musical!!! features special effects, including an 8′x6′ puppet made entirely of car parts that speaks in the recorded voices of the Magliozzis. Michael Wartofsky wrote the music.

Those longing for more Car Talk may want to head up to Boston, where the musical opens June 14 for a professional run at Central Square Theater.

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Tags: Boston, car parts, Kia, Michael Wartofsky, professor, Rusty Fenders, Suffolk University, Suffolk University in Boston, Wesley Savick

Davi Napoleon is a theater historian and journalist who writes widely about the arts. Schoolbiz, her column on theater training, ran for four years in TheaterWeek, and her features on design have been ...read more