Blondie does
Desperately Seeking Susan

The members of post-punk band Blondie are lending their songs to a West End musical based on the Madonna movie Desperately Seeking Susan, the musical's producers announced Tuesday.

The show, adapted from the 1985 film that helped propel the Material Girl to fame, is scheduled to open October 12 at the Novello Theatre in London.

Emma Williams, 24, has been cast as free-spirited New Yorker Susan, the role that helped to establish Madonna as an icon. Kelly Price, who recently appeared in the London production of Guys and Dolls, will play Roberta Glass, the bored New Jersey housewife (played by Rosanna Arquette in the film) whose life becomes entangled with Susan's.

The show will feature Blondie's songs ''Heart of Glass,'' ''Atomic,'' ''One Way or Another,'' ''Dreaming,'' and ''The Tide Is High'' as well as a new composition by front woman Debbie Harry. The writer is Peter Michael Marino, whose credits include the 1950s pulp homage Hollywood Nurses.

Harry said she hoped the show would eventually transfer to Broadway.

''It's a live show, so it is going to be different to the film, probably more lighthearted,'' she said.

The low-budget movie helped make a star of Madonna, who wore her own clothes to create Susan's era-defining look of leggings, lacy gloves, hair ribbons, and sunglasses.

Producer Susan Gallin said the stage show would closely mirror the plot of the film.

''The story is universal. It's a quirky, offbeat movie about women who change their lives and end up with the lives that they were meant to have,'' she said. (AP)