Michael Krasny today did a show on KQED all about the Tales of the City musical that's about to premiere at A.C.T. at the end of the month (they actually start preview performances on May 18, with opening night on June 1). Armistead Maupin talks about the genesis of the musical, Tony-winning librettist Jeff Whittey talks about getting the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears on board (see more of that story on Rolling Stone), and A.C.T. artistic director Carey Perloff talks about why the stories of Maupin's famous serial were so fitting for the stage.

Keep in mind that the books began as a column in the Chronicle in 1976, and PBS was only able to get the many interlocking plots down to mini-series length, so the challenges of getting this compressed into a single musical were kind of great.

Listen to the whole show below, in which they play a couple of clips of songs from the show, and in which Krasny opens things up to listeners who want to talk about what their lives were like in S.F. in the 70s.