Joe Iconis, of Garden City, wrote the music and lyrics and co-wrote the book for "Broadway Bounty Hunter," a new Off-Broadway musical. (Credit: Linda Rosier)
Make way for another piano man, Long Island. That would be Joe Iconis, the songwriter and social-media star of “Be More Chill” fame, who is never happier than when he’s sitting at a piano -- composing, performing or just ruminating on what has brought him to this place.
The Garden City native, who describes himself as a “musical theater nerd,” has long said he turned to songwriting because he was terrified of being on stage. Still, since the sixth grade he wanted to be a Broadway composer, which he became earlier this year when “Chill” opened at the Lyceum Theatre. Now, as that show nears what its fanatical fans consider an extraordinarily premature closing date on Aug. 11, Iconis has just opened a new show, “Broadway Bounty Hunter,” off-Broadway at the Greenwich House Theater.
It’s a radical departure from the youth-oriented “Chill,” which focuses on a teenage misfit who thinks a pill containing a Japanese supercomputer will make him popular. “Bounty Hunter” goes in an entirely different direction, says Iconis, speaking in the theater lobby on the afternoon of the first preview. It’s about a musical theater actress in her 60s, a “woman of a certain age” (T-shirts printed with the slogan are sure to be hot sellers), down on her luck and feeling the results of a sexist, ageist society. She can’t get a job, is about to be thrown out of her apartment and is grieving for her ex-husband.