Nostalgia is the mischievous, slippery cousin of history. For LDS people of a certain age, thinking of The Osmonds triggers such modes of gauzy recall. Here is a pop musical group that sold over 100 million records. The name is a brand, like Disney, with its own, built-in content ratings expectations. In various filial combinations and subsequent reinventions, they appeared so often on American television throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, and on concert stages since, that many audience members felt and still feel like part of the Utah-based clan, if not exactly family, at least like their distant cousins. While it is extraordinary to take in their 64-year tenure as a performing dynasty, their work as creative artists is much less acknowledged. In a single family, here also were songwriters, choreographers, arrangers, and producers—jobs in addition to their perpetual, voluntary role as Mormon ambassadors. Now, to that list of credits, add writers for the theater.

Jay Osmond, the group’s drummer and the youngest of the original Osmond Brothers until little Donny famously crashed the party, has a newly-written musical theater work touring in the United Kingdom, The Osmonds: A New Musical, with a cast of over two dozen singing actors. Osmond, who now lives in Chester, England, a short distance south of Liverpool, wrote the story for the soul-bearing, jukebox musical with Shaun Kerrison and Julian Bigg. Reviewing the production, The Daily Mail reported, “Jay is honest enough to disclose the tensions behind the toothy smiles. We see Merrill’s heartache, Wayne’s depression, their father George’s overbearing strictness, and the whole family’s near-bankruptcy. And yet the show is still a blast.” 

One tool to view the past is an uncritical filter of fondness; another is a sort of biographical autopsy, a valuable though painful exercise for anybody, even for a famously happy family.—Glen Nelson (U.K. production tour continues through December 3, 2022.)