"When the musical librettist Michael Zam first read The Kid, a 1999 memoir about a gay couple adopting a baby, he was certain that he wanted to turn it into a musical. He loved the acerbic tone of the book’s author, the syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, and the frank portrayal of a gay man’s dream for a family. But rather than plunge into adaptation, Mr. Zam made it a long-term project, because he felt it would take time — years, it turned out — to wrest a successful show out of this particular book," writes Patrick Healy. "Among the challenges posed by a musical version of The Kid, which opens Off Broadway on Monday at the New Group at Theater Row, was adding narrative tension and intrigue to a gay adoption story that was, in the memoir, funny and touching but relatively incident-free. Most of the unrest and angst in the book take place in Mr. Savage’s head; how best to dramatize that? And while the journey of a gay couple adopting a baby was a fresh read in 1999, would it feel dated a decade later?" READ MORE