Clara Peller, a.k.a. the “Where’s The Beef?” lady, is a cultural icon on the level of Spuds McKenzie in that she was briefly successful enough to be the subject of a novelty T-shirt that someone who has no idea who she was (Peller died in 1987) is wearing ironically right now. But because anything is possible in a post-Duck Dynasty musical world, Peller’s daughter is attempting to give her mother and her famous catchphrase new relevance with a musical about Peller’s life and meteoric rise to hamburger-based fame.
Called Clara And The Beef, the musical was written by Peller’s daughter Marlene Necheles along with Geoff Shell, a musician who unsurprisingly also runs something called Rad Universe, ”a retro community/brand/label rooted in ’80s & ’90s nostalgia.” No performances of the show have been scheduled as of yet, and The Columbus Dispatch says Necheles and Shell are “shopping for a theater company” for their musical masterwork. But with a soundtrack of instant classics like “Looking For The Beef,” “American Cattlemen (Where’s The Beef?),” and “Don’t Undercook The Beef (Or You’ll Get Salmonella)”—only one of which we just made up—Clara And The Beef should be ironically Broadway bound by the time the kids get sick of this ’90s nostalgia crap and the ’80s cycle back once more.