Up on the Roof is a musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 by Simon Moore

Simon Moore (writer)

Simon Moore is a British screenplay writer. He wrote Traffik miniseries, which was the basis for the Oscar-winning adaptation written for Traffic. He is also the writer and director of the 1991 film Under Suspicion and the fantasy mini series The 10th Kingdom .Moore wrote the adaptation of Stephen...

 and Jane Prowse

Jane Prowse

Jane Prowse writes and directs theatre and television.Her most recent play is A Round-Heeled Woman, the stage adaptation of Jane Juska's book A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance...

, which follows a decade in the lives of five friends who form an a cappella

A cappella

A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

 singing group at university.

The show was first staged in 1987 in London and starred Mark McGann

Mark McGann

Mark McGann is an English actor, director and musician.- Acting career :McGann first appeared on stage in 1981 in the production Lennon at the Everyman Theatre and the London Astoria where he portrayed John Lennon, role which won him the first of his two Olivier Award nominations for best actor in...

 and Gary Olsen

Gary Olsen

Gary Olsen was an English actor.Olsen was born in London and lived with an aunt and uncle, after losing both his parents at an early age. He attended the Archbishop Tenison's Church of England School in Kennington...

, and it was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Musical and McGann and Olsen were nominated for best actor in a musical. It was revived at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch

Hornchurch

Hornchurch is a large suburban town in England, and part of the London Borough of Havering. Hornchurch is in North-East London .It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan. It comprises a number of shopping...

 in May and June 2006.

The show was made into a film in 1997

1997 in film

-Events:* The original Star Wars trilogy's Special Editions are released.* Production begins on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.* Titanic becomes the first film to gross US$1,000,000,000 at the box office making it the highest grossing film in history until Avatar broke the record in 2010.*...

 starring Adrian Lester

Adrian Lester

-Personal life:Lester was born in Birmingham, England, the son of Jamaican immigrants Monica, a medical secretary, and Reginald, a manager for a contract cleaning company. He sang as a boy treble in the choir of St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham...

.