Musical "Stunt Girl" remembers the momentous life of pioneering reporter Nellie Bly

Coming at a moment when daily newspapers are folding across the country — including Seattle's oldest daily, the Seattle P-I, just this week — a musical about the glories of investigative journalism seems both timely and nostalgic.

"Stunt Girl," which celebrates the life and multiple careers of New York World reporter Nellie Bly (1864-1922), is the creation of Tony-nominated lyricist Peter Kellogg ("Anna Karenina") and composer David Friedman ("Listen to My Heart"). It's having its world premiere at Issaquah's Village Theatre, opening tonight; in May it moves to Everett.

Bly "accomplished so much in her life," said Kellogg, who is staying in Issaquah while the show is being directed by Steve Tomkins. "But I had never heard of her until my wife mentioned her."

Born in Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Cochrane took the pen name of Nellie Bly (borrowed from a Stephen Foster song) when she went to work for Joseph Pulitzer. In one of her most famous "stunts," she got herself committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, then wrote about the inhumane conditions, including a "treatment" that sounds like a form of waterboarding.

Kellogg and Friedman have been working for much of the past decade to pull her story together. They explained the musical's somewhat obscure title.

"Every New York newspaper had a stunt girl," said Kellogg. "They'd ride in a hot-air balloon, or test a bulletproof vest, or pretend to be insane, as Nellie did. They'd create the news rather than just write about it."

When she challenged the title of Jules Verne's fictional "Around the World in 80 Days" by circling the globe in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes — and writing a book about it — Bly became world-famous. (She's played in the suburban theater's production by Bellevue native Sarah Chalfy.)

In the late 1940s, another musical based on Bly's life flopped, apparently because it devoted most of its running time to her globe-trotting feat. In contrast, Kellogg and Friedman use the incident as the basis for a first-act curtain number, covering 50 locations in one song.

"It's very hard to sum up a person's life in a musical," said Kellogg. "We took a period of about 30 years, 1888 to 1918, when she was trying different things to find out who she was." Kellogg came up with four different endings before he was satisfied.

An earlier version of the show was presented four years ago as part of the Village Originals Festival. A workshop version followed here in 2007.

"David prefers it if I write the lyrics first," said Kellogg. "Then he'll write the music, and it's gorgeous. I tend to write funny stuff, while he touches the heart."

Working with another composer (Daniel Levine), Kellogg earned his Tony nominations for creating a musical version of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," which had a disastrous American debut in 1992.

"It was the first musical I ever wrote, and the first production was on Broadway," he said. "The book needed a lot of work." Eventually it had better receptions in Chicago and Japan, where it became a successful vehicle for a Japanese stage star.

Another Kellogg/Friedman collaboration, "Chasing Nicolette," was on stage at the Village Originals Festival last summer and will get a full production on the Mainstage in September.

"It's based on a French romance, written in the 13th century — and it's a Christian/Muslim love story," said Kellogg. "It's so relevant it's scary."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com