Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo on Invincible’s Timeless and Queer Story
A timeless clarion call for justice, Pat Benatar first wailed, “We can’t afford to be innocent; Stand up and face the enemy; It’s a do-or-die situation; We will be invincible,” the theme song to The Legend of Billie Jean, nearly 40 years ago.
Now, the song “Invincible” is also the title of a modern musical retelling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set to the music of Pat Benatar and her music and life partner, Neil Giraldo, that excavates the fallout of warring factions.
But unlike Shakespeare’s lovelorn tragedy, Invincible, with a multiracial cast and queer characters, is ultimately a story of hope. “You have two families that don’t get along two families that have different ways of how they live … and the power struggle between the two,” Giraldo tells The Advocate about the musical he and Benatar mounted at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif., with a book from The Fosters and Good Trouble co-creator Bradley Bredeweg. “It makes a lot of sense to today and all the political problems we have.
If there’s a word that we’re trying to give you with the story, it’s hope,” he adds. “We definitely need that.” “The beauty of Shakespeare is that the stories are timely and timeless.
