Broadway Shockers 2024: Tony Winner for Best Play Sued for Plagiarism

As 2024 draws to a close, TheaterMania looks back on some of the most jaw-dropping stories of the year.

This year, David Adjmi’s Stereophonic became the most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history, going on to win five trophies including Best Play. Four months later, Fleetwood Mac producer Ken Caillat sued Adjmi and the producers of the play (a group that includes Seaview, Sonia Friedman Productions, and the Shubert Organization) alleging that it is an unauthorized adaptation of his memoir Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.

Viewers had noticed the similarities between Adjmi’s five-member British-American band way back in 2023 when the show debuted at Playwrights Horizons, with TheaterMania critic David Gordon calling the characters “loose stand-ins for John and Christine McVie, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, as well as a Mick Fleetwood-esque drummer.”

But Caillat contended that entire anecdotes and curious turns-of-phrase had been lifted wholesale from his book and planted onstage without any accreditation.

For an overview of the suit’s claims, read this Story of the Week, in which I predicted that the parties would quietly settle before the suit ever made it to court.

That seems to be what has happened. On December 3, Reuters reported that the parties had “resolved the dispute in principle” and were finalizing the settlement in writing ahead of an initial conference to be held on or after December 23.

I highly doubt the details of that agreement will be made public, but don’t be surprised if you see Caillat’s name in the credits of the eventual film adaptation of Stereophonic.