With music by Hyeyoung Kim, lyrics by Michael Cooper, and book by Gina Femia, from an original book by Daniel F. Levin, the musical follows Fred Thompson and Skip Dundy, creators of Coney Island’s first Luna Park. Kim and Cooper met as students in NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and began collaborating in 2005. The musical was commissioned by SUNY Cortland in 2007–2008, while its authors were artists in residence there; after a week-long summer workshop, the university’s Department of Performing Arts gave it its world premiere at the Dowd Fine Arts Theatre on October 24–November 2, 2008, directed and choreographed by Kevin Halpin, with a cast of students, community members, and local children. A studio demo of selected songs was recorded in 2011, and 15 minutes of a revised version were presented in Musical Theatre Factory’s 4x15 series in New York on October 13, 2014.

In 2016 it was developed through the Oregon Performance Lab, closing the lab’s summer season with a concert version at Lane Community College in Eugene on September 11, and through Aria Entertainment’s From Page to Stage season in London, with three semi-staged readings at the Tristan Bates Theatre on November 1–3, directed by Benji Sperring. Its songs were featured in the Good to Go Songwriters’ Showcase, presented by Prospect Theater Company and the Good to Go Festival at the Times Center in New York on March 10, 2017. The newest version, with a revised book incorporating original text by Maxim Gorky, was presented in two benefit concerts by the Astoria Performing Arts Center in Queens on December 1–2, 2018, directed by Dev Bondarin. It has also been presented as a staged reading in the New York Film Academy’s New Work Series.