What's Eating Gilbert Grape

What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a new musical that MCC Theater, an Off-Broadway company, will premiere in June 2027. It closes MCC's 40th anniversary season and is set for the Newman Mills Theater, a stage inside the company's home building in Hell's Kitchen.

The musical is based on the 1991 novel What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges, who also writes the book for the stage version. Hedges wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film as well, so this is the same author returning to his own story for a third form. Four songwriters share the music and lyrics, and Matt Ross, Dede Harris and Linda Rubin are listed as producing in association with MCC.

MCC announced the production on June 18, 2026. At that point the company said that casting, other members of the creative team, exact performance dates and ticket information would come later.

The musical follows Gilbert Grape, a grocery store clerk in Endora, Iowa, a fictional rural town. His household is under strain: he lives with his mother, his two sisters and his younger brother.

In the 1993 film, Gilbert looks after his brother Arnie, who has an intellectual disability. The grocery store where Gilbert works is losing business to a new supermarket, and a young woman named Becky, stranded in town, upsets his routine. MCC has not described the plot of the stage version beyond its basic premise, so the musical may differ from the film in what it keeps and changes.

Adrian Enscoe, Christopher Sears, Sydney Shepherd and Regina Strayhorn wrote the songs together and share credit for both music and lyrics. Three of them, Enscoe, Shepherd and Strayhorn, perform together in a band called Bandits on the Run. Enscoe and Shepherd act as well, and Sears's work spans acting and composing. MCC has not yet published a song list.

Reports on a 2024 workshop said the plan was to use actor-musicians, who sing, play instruments and take on more than one role each. MCC has not said whether the premiere production will work that way.

Hedges developed the novel at MCC in a run of readings of its chapters in 1989, before it was published in 1991. Lasse Hallström directed the 1993 film, working from Hedges's own screenplay, with Johnny Depp as Gilbert and Leonardo DiCaprio as Arnie. DiCaprio was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for that role.

In February 2024, Playbill reported that MCC was running a workshop to develop a musical adaptation, with Hedges writing the book and the same four songwriters. In June 2026 MCC announced the world premiere as the closing production of its next season, set for June 2027.