Did We Sleep on 'Big Fish'?

(Photo: The Hartman Group)

by Chris Peterson, OnStage Blog Founder

I have a very specific toxic trait as a theatre person: I will ignore a show when it’s actually on Broadway, then fall madly in love with it ten years later like I’ve discovered buried treasure. Like, congratulations, Chris. You’ve invented time travel. Backward.

Anyway. Lately I cannot stop thinking about Big Fish. Yes, the 2013 musical. Yes, the one that came and went so fast it basically ghosted Broadway after 98 performances. No big awards run. No cultural chokehold. Just a gorgeous, earnest show with a score by Andrew Lippa that didn’t seem to fit whatever mood Broadway was in at the time.

And yet… it never really disappeared.

Because here’s the funny part: Big Fish has been out here quietly building an actual life. Regional theaters, colleges, high schools, the places where shows aren’t treated like content drops that get replaced in the algorithm by the next shiny thing. And every so often I’ll see someone admit, almost sheepishly, “I just listened to Big Fish for the first time and I can’t stop crying.”

And I’m like: yeah. Welcome. We have tissues.

It’s made me ask the question Broadway hates most because it implies we got it wrong: did we sleep on Big Fish?

Because honestly, there’s so much about this show that works. Lippa’s score is huge and emotional, but it doesn’t feel like it’s grabbing you by the lapels screaming, “CRY NOW.” “Time Stops” is one of those love songs that makes you stare at the dashboard for a second afterward like you just got emotionally rear-ended. “Fight the Dragons” hits that very specific parent nerve, the one that lives somewhere between “I want to protect you from everything” and “I don’t want to raise you to be afraid of everything.” And “I Don’t Need a Roof”… I mean, come on. If that song doesn’t crack you open, I’m not sure we’re watching the same species of theatre.

But what makes Big Fish stick isn’t just the music. It’s what the whole thing is actually about. Stories. The ones we tell our kids. The ones we tell ourselves. The ones we tell because the truth is too complicated, or too painful, or too ordinary to say out loud without dressing it up a little.

The first time I met Big Fish was the Big Fish, which I saw just a few days after my grandfather died. Perfect timing, universe. Ten out of ten. No notes. I was already walking around with grief sitting in my chest like a brick, and then that ending happened and I absolutely lost it. Not a delicate single tear. I mean full-body, can’t-breathe, “why am I still crying?” crying. That story about a son realizing he didn’t actually know his father the way he thought he did hit me like a freight train. It still does.

And honestly, I think Big Fish is hitting even harder now because I’m a dad.

I’m on the road a lot for work, around 100 nights a year. My son is still little, but even now I catch myself thinking about what he’ll remember. The stories I tell him. The silly ones. The real ones. The ones that are technically true but… enhanced, because I want his world to feel big and safe and magical. And then I wonder what parts of me he’ll carry with him and what parts he’ll have to imagine later.

Big Fish gets that. It understands that parenting is basically a long, messy attempt to be larger-than-life in your kid’s eyes while also being a very normal human who is sometimes tired and sometimes distracted and sometimes standing in an airport texting “I’m boarding” like that’s supposed to cover the emotional distance.

It also helps to remember what Broadway was rewarding in 2013. That era wanted things that were either dazzlingly theatrical or sharply modern or built for buzz. Big Fish showed up with its wide-open heart and said, “Here’s a story about love, memory, and letting go,” and Broadway kind of went, “Cool! Anyway!”

Maybe we just weren’t ready for a show that sincere without a gimmick.

But now? In a world where sincerity is making its comeback and people are starving for stories that actually feel human, Big Fish feels strangely right on time. Like it was always meant to find its audience slowly. Like it was always meant to live in the places where people let themselves feel things without immediately apologizing for it.

So if you haven’t revisited it, do it. Put the album on. Find a local production. Let it wreck you a little. Let it make you think about the stories you’re telling, and the ones you hope the people you love will still be carrying around when you’re not in the room anymore.

Because I think about it now in the most normal moments. Every time I kiss my son goodbye at the airport. Every time I promise him another adventure when I get back. Every time I try to make the leaving feel smaller by making the return feel bigger.