The ’60s will always be remembered for many things: the war in Vietnam, social unrest, the civil rights movement, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the really colorful clothes.

And then there was … the music.

It was a time, after all, when we witnessed the birth of Motown, the rebirth of rock ’n’ roll and the British invasion of a little group called The Beatles.

The music of that turbulent, optimistic, free love, world-changing decade is just as popular today. Which is why Florida Stage wanted to produce a theatrical summer concert show that celebrates that memorable time in music history.

Some Kind of Wonderful focuses on 1960-1964 — the years of Camelot — and includes chart-topping hits sung by the likes of The Beatles, The Drifters, Ray Charles, The Four Seasons, Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett.

The show, created by the same team behind the successful musical Cagney!, opens in previews Wednesday and features a cast of five singers (three women, two men) and a three-piece band. The actors play a group of friends who get together and share anecdotes and stories about the ’60s and what the songs of that decade meant to them.

“There’s a very concerted effort to evoke that time period and to remind the audience of what was happening culturally and politically in the world and how the music fit into that context,” says cast member Irene Adjan, who sings several tunes, including Streisand’s People, Connie Francis’ Lipstick On Your Collar and Patsy Cline’s Crazy. “The songs in the ’60s were very lyric-driven. Even the most bubblegum song told a story and created a mood for that story with the music.”

Bill Castellino, the show’s director and co-creator, says during Cagney!’s run, Florida Stage asked him and musical director and co-creator Christopher McGovern to produce a show tailor-made for the theater’s more mature audience. They immediately came up with the idea to pay homage to the music of the ’60s.

“During that time all of America was listening to the same songs,” Castellino says. “This was before radio stations began splintering off into genres. There weren’t hundreds and hundreds of radio stations. There were three TV networks, not 600 channels. There was a commonality. Everybody knew My Guy. It didn’t matter how rich or how poor you were or what neighborhood you grew up in, we had a common musical vocabulary. It was really an exciting musical time.”

Show created with big Internet assist
Castellino and McGovern chose to feature songs only from the decade’s first four years (the lone exception is The Supremes’ 1970 hit Up the Ladder to the Roof) because the Camelot years were innocent. “This is before large, life-changing events happened to the country,” McGovern says. “We’re in dire economic times right now, so this show just seemed like it would be just what the doctor ordered. We wanted to give the audience a breezy breath of fresh air.”

There are about 40 songs in the 95-minute, two-act show. The creators wanted a good mix and included rock, country, R&B, pop and “novelty” songs. Most of the songs are about love, heartbreak or longing for someone. “That seemed to be the favorite topic of all the songwriters back then,” Castellino cracks.

McGovern and Castellino looked at over 400 songs and estimate they listened to about 180 before narrowing the list to 40. “I don’t think we could’ve made this show in the time that we did without the Internet,” Castellino says, laughing. “Two months ago we sat in a rehearsal room with an empty white board and started looking at the top 100 songs of the decade. For the songs we didn’t know, we went to iTunes to hear 90 seconds of it or on YouTube to see how the original artists recorded it. We had our laptops burning.”

It was important that Wonderful wasn’t simply 90 minutes of music. “After a certain point, the ears just get tired,” McGovern points out.

Cousin Brucie inspires one plot line
The creators wanted the audience to connect with the songs. That’s why Castellino wrote the anecdotal stories which are interspersed throughout the show.

One such story is about Cousin Brucie, a popular New York City radio personality who introduced The Beatles at their memorable Shea Stadium concert in 1965. In the show, one of the actors talks about how much she loved Cousin Brucie and how she learned to flirt with boys by listening to the songs he played.

“I wanted to give the audience something that not only was musically satisfying, but theatrically satisfying as well,” Castellino says. “That meant this show had to have a beginning, a middle, an end and a real emotional flow. Hopefully that’ll make the audience invest in the characters.”

Like any new work, however, Wonderful has seen its share of changes, tinkering and reworking. Songs have been pulled and moved around right up to this week’s preview shows. The Beatles’ medley, for instance, was originally placed early in the show. Now it’s closer to the end.

“There have been changes every day,” Adjan says. “You show up at rehearsal and you have no idea what it’s going to be like. But Bill has such a good sense of the mood he’s trying to create and what he’s trying to say with all of this. I’ve done new works before, but never where I felt like I was participating in the process.”

As for what Castellino wants the audience to walk away with, he says, “We hope they can take a break from their worries and the things that are on their mind and just enjoy a night of amazing music.”

SOME KIND
OF WONDERFUL SONGS

What you’ll hear in the show

THE BEATLES
What made them great: ‘They tapped into that simple feeling of when guys liked girls,’ show director Bill Castellino says. ‘You listen to I Want To Hold Your Hand, And I Love Her and you knew these adolescent boys from Liverpool were giving us the real bottom line of what it felt like to be a guy who sees a girl and who wants to go out with her.’

Favorite song in the show: And I Love Her. ‘It’s so innocent and so beautiful,’ Castellino says. ‘It gave an insight in how sophisticated they would become in later years.’

TONY BENNETT
What makes him great: ‘He’s managed to keep a career going through many decades, and he’s charted in every single one,’ Castellino says. ‘That’s astounding.’

Favorite song in the show: I Left My Heart In San Francisco. ‘It’s just so romantic,’ Castellino says.

THE SUPREMES
What made them great: ‘I think of them as glamour,’ musical director Christopher McGovern says. ‘They were the epitome of cool, sophisticated glamour.’

Favorite song in the show: Up the Ladder to the Roof. ‘It was an invitation to give yourself a break and breathe and enjoy the great things in your life,’ Castellino says. ‘This song said what our show’s all about.’

SOME KIND
OF WONDERFUL SONGS

What you’ll hear in the show

BARBRA STREISAND
What makes her great: “She was the swan and unique as she tilted against the windmills and broke the mold of what was acceptable for beauty and the female sound,” McGovern says. “Doris Day was the quintessential girl singer of that time. The emotionality that Streisand introduced broke that mold.”

Favorite song in the show: People. “That will always be her iconic song,” McGovern says. “After all the years of success she’s had, people still associate that song with her.”

THE TEMPTATIONS
What made them great: “I just always think of them as being really slick,” McGovern says. “Some of the groups in the ‘60s could get a little sloppy in their presentation, but The Temptations were really on the nose with their style and choreography. It was all so clean.”

Favorite song in the show: My Girl. “The lyrics, ‘sunshine on a cloudy day’ are so poetic,” Castellino says. “It was such a memorable song.”