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In Jason Robert Brown's new rock musical, "13," the 13-year-old characters stand in a semicircle, staring bewilderedly at scraps of parchment.The teenagers in this show, which has its world premiere Jan. 7 at the Mark Taper Forum downtown, are non-Jewish students at a middle school in the fictional Appleton, Ind., and the "mysterious" documents are invitations to a bar mitzvah, courtesy of the Jewish new-kid-in-town, Evan Goldman.This funny-poignant piece is the brainchild of 36-year-old composer-lyricist Brown -- who is often described as a successor to Stephen Sondheim -- and among the smartest and most sophisticated talents in today's musical theater.
Jason Robert Brown began his musical, "The Last Five Years," about a doomed relationship, while in the midst of his own messy divorce seven years ago. Back then, Brown, like the show's fictional husband, was a "young, ambitious Jewish kid from New York" with a non-Jewish actress wife, he said in a telephone interview from his New York home.
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