By Liz Armstrong
Something Rotten was conceived by brothers Karey Kirkpatrick and Wayne Kirkpatrick, who also did the music and lyrics together. John O’Farrell wrote the book with Karey. The musical comedy hit Broadway in 2015 and is famous for its musical theater references and satirical elements.
In 2015, Karey and Wayne were nominated for a Tony for Best Original Score Written for Theatre, and Karey and John were nominated for Best book of a Musical. The team was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Original Cast Recording.
Something Rotten follows brothers, Nigel and Nick Bottom, who compete with William Shakespeare in the play creation process.
“What would it be like writing the first musical that ends up being a mashup of musicals and Shakespeare plays?” Karey wondered. The concept started between conversations with Wayne and Karey, as they discussed writing in the shadow of massing talent.
The brothers brought John on after they created five songs and the idea.
“I knew we all had the same sensibility and sense of humor. So it seemed like the perfect fit,” Karey told Convos. “Any time we had to write something sonnet-like or in iambic pentameter, John just had that under his skin because he was raised in it more.”
Together, the team contributed their individual backgrounds (Wayne’s songwriting, Karey’s screenwriting, and John’s experience in film and as satirical author) to create the high-energy, wholly-entertaining musical comedy.
Karey Kirkpatrick
Karey is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. His films include the notable James and the Giant Peach, Over the Hedge, Chicken Run franchise, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Charlotte’s Web, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and many more.
He was born in 1964 in Monroe, Louisiana. Karey attended the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He graduated in 1988 and worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation as a staff writer for three years.
Karey worked with DreamWorks Animation, contributing the films The Road to El Dorado and Madagascar. In 2013, he worked on Sony’s Smurfs 2.
Studio Ghibli produced The Secret World of Arrietty (2012) and From Up on a Poppy Hill (2013), for which Karey wrote the English screenplay.
Other notable awards include that of an Emmy nomination for the song “Such a Beautiful Day” for Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe.
He primarily resides in southern California and has a Snoopy film in the production.
Wayne Kirkpatrick
Wayne is Karey’s older brother. An American songwriter and musician, he wrote the highly successful 2020 musical Mrs. Doubtfire, on which Karey also collaborated.
Born in 1961 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Wayne graduated from Baton Rouge Magnet School in 1979. At 14, he taught himself to play guitar and began writing songs. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee at 21 and still resides there.
Most known for working in the country, pop, and Christian music genres, Wayne’s work includes providing vocals, playing guitar and keyboards, and writing for other artists. His songs have been recorded by Little Big Town, Faith Hill, Garth Brooks, Amy Grant, Martina McBridge, Trisha Yearwood, Casting Crowns, and many more.
Some of his chart-topping songs include “Every Heartbeat” (Amy Grant), “Good For Me” (Amy Grant) “Takes a Little Time” (Amy Grant), “Place in This World” (For King and Country), and “Wrapped Up in You” (Garth Brooks).
Eric Clapton’s “Change the World,” won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for Wayne’s version. Other awards include Producer of the Year at the 24th GMA Dove Awards and several NSAI Songwriter Achievement Awards. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
Wayne and Karey co-wrote the six original songs for Smallfoot (2018). In 2023, Wayne announced that he and Don Chaffer would be working on a musical based on the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville.
John O’Farrell
John is a British-Irish author and comedy scriptwriter and is one of a few British writers to have best-sellers in both the fiction and nonfiction genres. Over one million of his books have been sold in the United Kingdom and have been translated into over 30 languages.
Born in 1962 in Berkshire, England, John wrote comedy for the school magazine as a kid. At the age of 10, he played Chirstopher Robin in the West End. In 1976, John appeared in the film Beyond the Grave and the TV series Jumbo Spencer.
He is known for being a lead writer for the shows Spitting Image and Have I Got News For You. Like Karey, John also worked on Chicken Run and wrote the 2023 sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget together, bringing the Aardman Animations stop-motion comedies to life.
John worked on a number of radio comedy series, some of which include Little Blighty on the Down and A Look Back at the Future, which won a British Comedy Award.
He is also the author of The Man Who Forgot His Wife (nominated for the Bollinger Wodehouse Award) and An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, along with a political memoir, Things Can Only Get Better, which was nominated for the George Orwell Award.
John wrote columns for The Independent and The Guardian and sold his first novel The Best a Man Can Get in 2002. In 2015, he published his fifth novel, There’s Only Two David Beckhams, winning a third nomination for the Wodehouse Award.
The writer is also known for his political involvement, and John’s memoir Things Can Only Get Worse outline his political and education campaigns. John and his family currently reside in South London.
