Inspiration


Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings is a sequel to the original Forever Plaid. Plaid Tidings is a holiday version with modified story and songs.

Stuart Ross wrote Forever Plaid as an homage to the close-harmony "guy groups" of the 1950s, like The Four Aces and The Four Freshmen. Ross also included four-part arrangements of famous solo songs from the '50s, such as "Chain Gang," "Sixteen Tons" and an entire medley dedicated to songs by Perry Como. He got the idea to kill his characters from a cabaret in Rochester, and having the show running in repertory with Nunsense generated the plot point of the busload of Catholic girls as a cause of death. When the musical was in its initial stages, however, producers urged him not to make the Plaids dead, although Ross brought back the gimmick when the show moved to New York.

 Ross never intended for the show to be a nostalgic jukebox revue. Instead, he created the Plaids – a representation of the clean-cut mentality of the '50s – to show what would happen if people of that sensibility came into a modern-day world. He purposely fleshed out the four Plaids to give each character a personality and, ultimately, demonstrate to them what a wonderful life they had without stardom.

Productions


Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings premiered at the Pasadena Playhouse on November 11, 2001.

Subsequent productions played to great success, including at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia (known for its productions of the original Forever Plaid), and the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. The 2010 San Diego cast featured Michael Winther, Leo Daignault, Jason Heil and David Brannen.

Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings has been produced regionally by a variety of theatres and is often done annually in the places where it has become an audience favorite, such as at the New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, CA.

Cultural Influence

• Forever Plaid: Plaid Tidings has become a recurring holiday favorite across the country, with many theatres doing the show annually.

• A cast recording called Holiday in Plaid was released in 2003. It featured Tony Award winner, Faith Prince. It was produced by Bill Meade, with musical direction by David Snyder and original vocal concept by James Raitt, cousin of Bonnie.

Trivia


• In addition to Plaid Tidings, the Forever Plaid franchise has another sequel, The Sound of Plaid: The New Glee Club Version of Forver Plaid. There was also a movie version of Forever Plaid that was released in 2009.

• In a program note written for the 2013 New Village Arts Theatre production, Forever Plaid creator, Stuart Ross, says that he resisted making a holiday sequel to Forever Plaid for quite some time, despite pressure to do so based on the original's popularity. However, because of 9/11, he finally gave in and wrote Plaid Tidings.