LOS ANGELES — If nostalgia is your destination, you don’t need roads to get there. "Back to the Future: The Musical" is in itself a time machine. Caden Brauch, who slips into the puffy vest of Marty McFly, wasn’t even born when the movie was released. He can’t remember the first time he saw it. It was something he just always knew about.
“It was just baked into my childhood,” he said. “Shout out to my parents. They did a good job.”
As much as he loved the movie, he never dreamed that one day he’d find himself at the wheel of one of the most famous cars in Hollywood History. He remembers the first time he sat behind the wheel after he had been cast in the national tour.
“To be able to get in it and see, you know, all the film accurate things, the flux capacitor and everything,” he said. "It was such a special moment.”
Every detail the audience remembers is here in a stage adaption that steers only ever so slightly away from the original film.
“Everyone who is involved, both on stage, off stage, the creative team, the crew, all the designers, they’re all fans of this movie,” Brauch said. “I think that really translates. So much love and care was put into this production.”
Of course it helps that the book of the musical was written by none other than Bob Gale who co-wrote the film with Robert Zemeckis. Over the years he says many people have asked about a "Back to the Future 4," which he insists isn’t going to happen.
“First of all, we can’t get Michael J. Fox in it. And who wants to see a back to future movie without Michael J. Fox,” he said. “But the idea of the musical is to revisit the original movie in a new format, and give people the same type of emotional reaction that they got the first time they saw the original movie, which I think is what people really want when they say we want another back to the future movie.”
He and Don Stephenson who plays Doc Brown recently met outside the Gamble House in Pasadena, which was used for the exteriors of Doc’s house in the film. Built in 1908, the masterpiece of the American Arts and Crafts movement was already part of architectural history and Gale says Back to the Future was it’s film debut.
“It’s one of the greatest houses in Southern California,” Gale said. “It was never seen before in any movie. And I don’t think it’ll ever be seen in any other movie because everybody will now say, 'Well, that’s Doc Brown’s house.'"
While Stephenson couldn’t resist reenacting one of the scenes shot on the property, hammily running down the slope from the house to what in the film is Doc’s workshop, his Doc is not a carbon copy of Christophers Lloyd’s performance, although he does try to keep what he describes as the actor’s childlike sense of wonder about everything.
“Everything is amazing,” he said. “Remember when you would put the vinegar in and make the volcano explode? That’s still amazing to Doc. Everything’s amazing to doc. And I knew that I could relate to that.”
Like everyone else on the project, he has long revered the genre-mashing film.
“It has action. It has adventure. It has romance. It has sci-fi,” Stephenson said. “But I think the thing that has kept keep people coming back to it for all of these years is the love, the heart that it has. I think everybody feels that and sees that. And it’s the heart that Bob gave it.”
Brauch agrees. There’s a lot of flashy, theatrical effects in the musical version (from the clever staging of the clock tower scene to the car taking flight into the future) but in the end he says it’s about more than the Delorean.
“[Audiences] appreciate the spectacle but they’re left also with a really heartwarming message at the end,” he said. “The message and the heart of this show is really what resonates with audiences.”
A message about the power of love that continues to stand the test of time.