Is a ‘Duck Dynasty’ musical the ‘worst idea ever’?

The director almost quit.

The writer’s initial reaction was, “This has got to be the worst idea ever perpetrated on the American theatergoing public.”

They’ve changed their minds. Now they have to change yours.

“The Duck Commander Musical” may face the highest burden of proof of any stage musical in our young century.

Forget that the sanctioned biography of the “Duck Dynasty” family, launching this week at the Rio, is a big-budget project from the big-league Broadway producers behind “Matilda” and “Jersey Boys.”

(Performances April 8-14 are considered previews building up to an April 15 premiere, though ticket prices are the same.)

The project sanctioned and promoted by the Robertson family has been greeted with incredulity since it was announced on the front page of The New York Times last November.

The first hurdle is the audacity of adapting a reality TV show, surely a slap in the face to the prestigious, highbrow Broadway tradition of “Legally Blonde” or “Rocky.”

“I think the problem is the term ‘reality series,’ ” says Asa Somers, who wrote the “Duck Commander” book around songs by friends from his rock-band days, Joe Shane and Steven and Robert Morris. He admits the other part of his first reaction was, “Now what, a Kardashian musical? A Honey Boo Boo musical? ‘America’s Top Model’? Where does it end?”

If it ended with that leap, they might have been in the clear. But the second hurdle was the controversy that erupted while the musical was being adapted from Willie and Korie Robertson’s memoir, “The Duck Commander Family: How Faith, Family and Ducks Built a Dynasty.”

“It really came as a surprise and shock to all of us,” says director Jeff Calhoun, when family patriarch Phil Robertson’s inflammatory comments were published in a GQ interview just days after the show’s first table reading. “We hadn’t been working with the father at all.

“I was about to leave the project after Phil said those hideous, uninspired, unenlightened comments,” Calhoun says of Robertson quotes about “homosexual offenders,” gay attraction as a “sin (that’s) not logical” and “homosexuals, drunks, terrorists” being “to sort out later” by God.

“I needed to make sure (Phil) was not speaking for the family,” Calhoun says. “I needed to make sure the family did not agree with him. I called Willie and I told him how serious this was, and to his credit he was at my apartment within 24 hours.

“He canceled a very lucrative hunting gig out West,” Calhoun adds, and “sat down in my kitchen with my husband — I thought it was important that my husband was there — and confided it was the first home of an openly gay person he’d ever been in. It really puts things in perspective right away.

“But I also in my heart celebrated that. It was already a milestone,” he says. “We sat down and I asked him very serious questions, and he answered all of them well beyond my satisfaction. I felt like we had not only a meeting of the minds but a meeting of the hearts.”

When Calhoun asked Willie if his silence about Phil made him complicit, he thought about it a while, then later called to tell the director he had decided to go on Sean Hannity’s show and break his silence.

The ultimate decision? “We really decided we both wanted to do this to build bridges between different cultures,” Calhoun says.

However “The Duck Commander Musical” is received in the outside world, it’s been a bridge-building experience for both the Robertsons and the show people. “Myself, the set designer, the lighting designer, the costume designer, the musical director, the wig supervisor — all gay,” Calhoun says.

The creative team and cast members spent time with the Robertsons in West Monroe, La.

“We shot guns and rode around on four-wheelers and spent some time on the river and bayou and ate all the different food they eat,” Somers says. “I’ve been to their church twice.

“We’re not going to change the world, but we certainly hope to move the needle a little bit in the area of tolerance. On both sides,” the writer adds.

“If this show were to close after opening night,” Calhoun says, “I think we would all think this was a worthwhile venture just from a sociological point of view.”

As a theatrical venture, they know the rest of the world still needs convincing. Or at least to know, just what kind of Duck is this?

The first things to explain? It’s not a spoof, and it’s not the “Duck Dynasty” TV show.

“The very easy way to go would have been to make a big joke out of the whole thing. A big, fluffy lightweight wink and a nod,” Somers says. “I think we all realized very quickly that could not sustain itself.”

Instead, he was pulled in by the Robertson’s book. “I read a lot about their personal journey. There’s really a lot of heart there,” he says. “That’s what’s sorely missing in a lot of musicals that don’t quite make it, is the heart.

“They play it honestly,” Calhoun says of his cast. “It’s not like we’re dealing with boring characters here.”

The script even includes the Phil Robertson interview controversy. “It would have been disingenuous not to,” Calhoun says. “We tackle it head on.”

Ben Thompson, who plays Willie, says the Robertsons’ story is very dramatic and lends itself to being onstage.

“That’s why I love the art of theater, that it can go anywhere,” Thompson says.

He should know. Thompson was in the original Broadway cast of two other unlikely musicals: “American Idiot,” adapted from the Green Day concept album, and “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” the less-successful rap musical based on the songs of Tupac Shakur.

But here Thompson has the unique experience of playing a real person, and one he’s been able to call or text with questions. “It’s a very fine line to walk between impersonating or not,” he says. “For me, it’s more important to get Willie’s heart right, to get who he is as a human.”

“I think my character is Kori-infused,” says Ginna Claire Mason, who plays her. “Kori is radiant and wonderful and beautiful and I would never try to just copy her. What’s really nice is there is so much on the page for us to work with as actors.”

Thompson agrees.

“With the Robertsons it’s already there for you,” he says. “It really is a rags to riches story. I like to say it’s like ‘Jersey Boys’ for rednecks.”

Only with “Jersey Boys,” the audience knew the songs, but not the Four Seasons offstage. Here, it’s the opposite.

“The music is very catchy and really sticks with you and covers all these different genres and different styles of music,” Mason says. “And the writing is just so good that even months after the (first table) reading was over I was still humming these songs and remembered all the words.”

“We’re gonna surprise a lot of people,” Thompson predicts.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.