If you knew exactly how your favorite relationship would end, would you still begin it? 

At the very center of its charming and adventurous heart, MAYBE HAPPY ENDING asks us bold questions about why love grows, how reliable are memories, and what endures from the scope of one’s life. 

And to think, this six-time Tony® winner, inspired by a song overheard in a coffee shop, was never expected to make it to Broadway. 

 

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING Is About What Again? 

HelperBots. But hear us out. 

Korean-born writer Hue Park happened to be sitting in a Brooklyn coffee shop right after the breakup of a long-term relationship. Over the speakers, he heard former Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn’s song, “Everyday Robots.” The lyrics, “We are everyday robots/On our phones/In the process of getting home,” struck him as particularly poignant. After all, it’s quite a bit true, isn’t it? 

Park took the thought to the next level: What if he contacted his friend, the composer Will Aronson, to collaborate on a small show about love and relationships, only the protagonists were the post-digital world evolution of humans. That is, something akin to a smart phone, but a person. I.e., a robot. A SmartPerson robot. Hence, the seed of MAYBE HAPPY ENDING found its soil as the two men started developing the idea.  

Park and Aronson had already collaborated on several K-pop (short for Korean Pop) songs. That success led to a Korean producer commissioning the pair for a musical. The result, Bungee Jump (2012), won them Best Score at the Korea Musical Awards, which paved the way for Aronson to pitch the concept of MAYBE HAPPY ENDING to a Korean producer at the Wooran Cultural Foundation, a Seoul-based non-profit. The foundation found the idea fresh and the score exciting, producing the workshop version in 2014 in Seoul, then the full-length Korean language version in 2016. It won Best Musical at the Korea Musical Awards in 2016. 

At this point, Park and Aronson didn’t know where MAYBE HAPPY ENDING could go next. It was a Korean musical written in America translated from Korean to English, and they weren’t sure Western audiences would respond with the same enthusiasm to the story. But the folks at Alliance Theatre in Atlanta saw how special this musical was, so they brought it to the States in 2020. 

 

The MAYBE HAPPY ENDING Plot Twist 

Ironically, the story is precisely what American audiences responded to—that, and the mind-boggling technical stagecraft that transports audiences convincingly to 2060-ish Seoul. Despite Park’s and Aronson’s guesses that MAYBE HAPPY ENDING could find a home Off-Off-Off Broadway, the buzz that the Atlanta run generated reached the right ears in New York.

It turns out that audiences deeply identified with Oliver and Claire, the main characters, discarded because they were eclipsed by the next generation of upgraded HelperBots. They are alone in retirement community apartments, without purpose but with plenty of life left, no longer considered useful, cycling through their days with small comforts. Then, Claire’s charger breaks, escalating the amount of time she has left before her power supply depletes forever. 

 

This inciting incident leads her to knock on Oliver’s door to borrow a charger. They meet. Everything they know about life is about to change. At this point in the show, audiences are invested in what’s to become of our hero and heroine as they face a world where their time is running out. Not quite a spoiler alert ... but they do decide to break the law forbidding bots from leaving their retirement hubs, going undercover as a human couple so Oliver can reunite with his former owner. So, you’re getting a lot more than just a love story—it's also an adventure tale where the stakes are high if our friends Oliver and Claire get caught out-of-bounds and pretending to be human. 

 

 

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING is "Visually Stunning” 

In 2024, MAYBE HAPPY ENDING premiered on Broadway starring Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen, instantly capturing the hearts of New York audiences, just like it did in Seoul and Atlanta. But the other aspect of this musical that had the Big Apple whispering about Tony Awards was the technical production. 

Every so often, a show goes up on Broadway that blows people away with its next-level production elements. Think Phantom of the Opera in the 80s, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, where the sets, lighting, and special effects immerse us in the place—we believe Phantom and Christine are gliding on an underground river; we understand the sensory agony of 15-year-old Christopher; we’re convinced Spidey is fighting in mid-air. 

So it is with MAYBE HAPPY ENDING. The exquisitely detailed sets of near-future Seoul have us believing we are really there. For all of us who appreciate an immersive theater experience that consumes our imaginations, MAYBE HAPPY ENDING satisfies deeply. The show uses projections, holographic effects, moving scenery, and advanced lighting effects to transport us around several location changes as Oliver and Claire search for their friends. As Playbill noted, it’s “a technical marvel.” New York Theater Guide called it “visually sublime.” 

We call it a must-see. 

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING Tickets in Greenville 

We’re thrilled to present fresh, new musicals from Broadway, and MAYBE HAPPY ENDING is one we believe will move and delight Greenville theater fans. The show won six Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Scenic Design—and you're about to discover why. 

There’s so much to connect to with the story and the production spectacle, but in the end, MAYBE HAPPY ENDING is just an old-fashioned love story set in the future. Will Aronson's score is intentionally full of vintage music, including 1950s-style jazz numbers that complement Oliver’s obsessive love of old jazz. This element ties us to the 20th century, keeping us grounded in something familiar as we fly along with Oliver and Claire in a futuristic vision of what life may look like not too, too far from now. 

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING runs in Peace Concert Hall Sep. 29–Oct. 4, 2026. Get your tickets, and we’ll see you in Seoul.