'The Notebook' Is Giving Joy Woods Her Broadway Breakout, And A New Video Proves it
Audiences who have yet to catch the Broadway musical adaptation of “The Notebook” can nonetheless get a feel for the show with the music video for “My Days,” a standout ballad from the show’s cast recording.
Released in tandem with the full album on Friday, the “My Days” video finds actor and singer Joy Woods ― one of three actors playing Allie in the musical ― dressed to the nines in a floor-length ballgown as she gazes wistfully at the New York skyline from the upper floors of a skyscraper.
The clip shifts from moody black and white to full, sun-drenched color, “Wizard of Oz” style, as Woods steps out onto the building’s roof and the ballad reaches its crescendo.
Watch the music video for “My Days” below.
“The Notebook,” which opened on Broadway at New York’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre last month, is based on Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 novel of the same name.
The romantic tearjerker was adapted for the big screen in 2004, with actors Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams portraying Sparks’ star-crossed lovers Noah and Allie, whose relationship overcomes a series of obstacles to span decades.
To amplify the universality of the story, composer-lyricist Ingrid Michaelson, book writer Bekah Brunstetter and co-directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams have reimagined Noah and Allie as a mixed-race couple, played by three sets of actors of varying ages over the course of the show.
“I’ve always been a fan of not taking the movie and putting it on stage, but creating another iteration of the property,” Michaelson, who directed the “My Days” video herself, told Vanity Fair in an interview published Friday. “There’s the book, there’s the movie, and then we wanted there to be the piece of theater. From the very beginning, I knew I didn’t want to just slap the movie on stage, because to me, that’s not satisfying.”
Williams, making her Broadway directorial debut this spring with both “The Notebook” and the revival of “The Wiz,” praised the updates to the story in an interview with HuffPost.
“When I see movies, I very seldom see myself in the them,” said the director, who is Black. “To suddenly be included in a story that I knew so well ― that so many of us from so many races know so well ― really meant a lot.”
Fans of “My Days” will be able to catch a live performance of the song next week when Michaelson and Woods drop by “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”