Alysha Deslorieux (Middle Allie) and Ken Wulf Clark (Middle Noah). Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Sentimentality is often scrutinized. Rightly so — let the teary among us admit. Yet, in the hands of people who appreciate its power but also believe it has integrity, the sentimental can be more than merely moving or easily nostalgic. Enter singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and writer Bekah Brunstetter, the tag team responsible for the musical adaptation of one of the more unabashedly sentimental projects to come down the pike, The Notebook. 

A story of young lovers that gives ample time to their aged selves began as a novel by bestselling author Nicholas Sparks before becoming one of those guilty pleasure movies you stop to watch if you come across it on cable.  

The 2004 film launched the careers of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams who played Noah and Allie, the pair at the center of a story of love and loss — both actual separation and the loss incurred by Alzheimer’s. It also introduced a new generation to the storied actors portraying them in their later years: Gena Rowlands and James Garner. He attentively visits her, reading to her from the volume of the title and hoping for glimmers of recognition in the haze of her dementia. 

Like many a romantic couple, Noah and Allie “meet cute.” And Michaelson’s own way to writing the music and lyrics for The Notebook is similarly charming. Her partner of 10 years, Will Chase, performs on Broadway and television. Chase knew that Michaelson loved Broadway; she studied musical theater in college before pursuing a different route. Thanks to some prodding by friend Sara Bareilles — who’d written a successful Broadway score with Waitress — Michaelson had begun thinking that something she’d yearned to do might be something she could actually do. At an after party circa 2017, Chase introduced Michaelson to Kevin McCollum, producer of the Broadway shows In the Heights, SIX, and Mrs. Doubtfire among others.  

Beau Gravitte (Older Noah) and Sharon Catherine Brown (Older Allie). Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Chase brought her over to McCollum. “Ingrid wants to write a musical,” she recalls Chase saying by way of introduction. “Kevin, you’re a Broadway producer, why don’t you guys have a chat?” They did. And somewhere in this nascent intro, McCollum told Michaelson she’d “be good for The Notebook,” the rights of which he and his partners were acquiring.  

“I thought that meant ‘you’re hired,’” she recalled, with a smile and reclining on her bed before going to audio only on the video chat. It didn’t, quite. No matter. McCollum has been quoted saying that Michaelson went home that night and wrote a slew of songs for a show for which she had yet to be hired. “It might have been that night,” Michaelson offered. 

“But I know. I thought the job was mine to lose,” she said, smiling perhaps at the power-of-positive-thinking audacity of her assumption.  

When they spoke next, McCollum told her she was the only one on the list — “for now,” Michaelson said. “And I was like, the list? There’s gonna be a list? And then I just doubled down, and I wrote more and more songs.” The first two songs she wrote in her whirlwind of creativity are among the musical’s most quintessential duets: one of hope, “Carry You Home,” and one of fragile recall, “I Know.”  

Meanwhile, while Michealson was churning out songs for and about Noah and Allie, Brunstetter got wind of a possible adaptation of The Notebook. “My lawyer heard that it was being developed and that they were looking for a book writer,” she recalled, having taken a break from production on a new show being shot on Nantucket. “And I’m actually from North Carolina, close to where the book takes place.” She’s also “a sap,” she confesses.

“I love hopeful stories. I love intergenerational stories. And my lawyer, thankfully, knows all these things about me. So, when he heard about it, his ears kind of perked up.” — Ingrid Michaelson, Singer-Songwriter

Once she tossed her hat in the ring, the producers sent her some demos of Michaelson’s early songs, said Brunstetter. “I just fell in love and just knew that it was going to be beautiful and that I had to be a part of it.” 

“When you’re adapting something, you have a roadmap. Bekah and I, we followed that roadmap, but we did not want to slap the movie on stage,” said Michaelson. “We wanted to create something that had its own life, its own heartbeat. We stayed very true to the story, but we added characters. We definitely created something that is a standalone piece.” 

Both creatives know their way around a sentimental note and a heart-tweaking gesture. Michaelson’s career began to sing when her songs “Without You” and “Keep Breathing,” among others, were featured on that iconic melodrama-in-scrubs: “Grey’s Anatomy.” As for Brunstetter, in addition to being a playwright, she worked on and wrote for the ever-weepier series: “This Is Us.”  

“I get it,” Brunstetter replied when asked about the disdain sentimentality can arouse in critics. “I’m sentimental person and I’m also the kind of person who’s always empathizing with everyone, regardless of their point of view.  

“So, you know, the easy answer to that question is, oh, people don’t want to be vulnerable, right? People don’t want to be made to feel,” she said. “I don’t think it’s really that.”

“It’s more like people resist the feeling of being manipulated. And that is subjective. It just comes back to the fact that art is subjective, and life is subjective. Something that makes someone think and cry won’t make the next person think and cry. It just depends on where they’re at in their life and what their lived experience is.”— Bekah Brunstetter, Book Writer

(This equanimity might be one of the reasons the main ingredient in Brunstetter’s The Cake — a play about a devout bakery owner who doesn’t want to make a cake for her beloved niece’s gay wedding — is compassion.) 

While Michaelson has no plans to peek in on the Denver stop of The Notebook tour, she will be performing in her singer-songwriter guise at Boettcher Hall with the Colorado Symphony in late November. Still it’s clear, she has no plans for her first musical to be her last. 

“I’ve had a great time writing music for myself. I’ve gone on the road. I’ve performed, and I love it. But there’s another side of me that really loves writing for people, writing songs that I could never sing, writing songs with notes that I could never reach,” she shared.  

“Seeing other people take in your words and your melodies and making it their own,” she has come to think of as a kind of “metabolizing” she said. “Sort of metabolizing your art and then making it their own art or a little hybrid of mine and theirs together.”  

That’s not a bad description of the work of Michaelson and Brunstetter did to bring The Notebook to vivid, melodic life.  

DETAILS
The Notebook
Dec 16 – 28, 2025 • Buell Theatre
Tickets