Theater overview
SMASH
Two hours and half-hour, with one intermission. On the Imperial Theatre, 249 West forty fifth Avenue.
“Let’s Be Bad” is a music from the Broadway musical “Smash.”
It is usually the manufacturing’s motto.
The overall absence of style begins earlier than you even enter the theater, with the title emblazoned on the marquee.
Final I checked, the NBC TV collection that impressed the rancid present that opened Thursday evening on the Imperial was canceled after two seasons as a result of critics and audiences rightly deserted it.
To name this system culty can be beneficiant. “Smash” is credited by some with popularizing the time period “hate-watch.”
Now, twelve years later, a lot of the backstage drama’s inventive crew has doubled-down on their failure and produced one thing far, far worse.
It’s exhausting to evaluate whose selections are extra misguided: these of the back-stabbing, wacky creators of “Bombshell,” the fictional musical comedy about Marilyn Monroe we see implode, or the very actual minds (Robert Greenblatt, Steven Spielberg, Susan Stroman) behind the catastrophe that’s “Smash.”
For the few who noticed it on NBC — and for the even fewer who keep in mind any particulars — solely two characters return, and with altogether totally different and dumber storylines: Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder) and Karen (Caroline Bowman).
Ivy, performed memorably on TV by Megan Hilty, is a longtime main Broadway star who’s taking up the function of Marilyn in a bubbly comedy concerning the “Some Like It Hot” star known as “Bombshell.” You recognize, the celeb who endured abusive relationships and tragically died of an overdose at age 36? See above: Whole absence of style.
Karen, Katharine McPhee on the tube, is her hard-working, well-liked understudy. She’s additionally married to the actor taking part in Joe DiMaggio (Casey Garvin), however that’s barely talked about.
From there, each new concept within the ebook by Bob Martin ought to’ve been crumpled up and thrown over his shoulder.
Ivy hires a kooky performing coach named Susan (Kristine Nielsen), who attire like Igor from “Young Frankenstein,” and feeds her drugs to get her absolutely into character. Preposterously, Ivy begins to imagine she actually is Marilyn and turns into a drugged-up terror.
From the stress, Jerry (John Behlmann), one of many musical’s husband-and-wife co-writers, develops alcoholism. Three flasks fall out of his jacket. Hilarious!
The pompous director Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas, giving the identical step-and-repeat efficiency he at all times does) begins creepily slobbering over a refrain boy — and in the long run, the present decides that it’s very candy.
Then, Act Two goes from doubtful to nonsensical. A buildup of more and more ludicrous problems and mockable detours makes the viewers quietly query the inspiring previous credo “The show must go on.”
As does Stroman’s course — hackneyed as ever — and, sure, the rating.
“Hairspray” duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s songs from the TV collection, save for the rousing “Let Me Be Your Star,” all sound like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” when carried out again to again somewhat than over a months-long season. And so they’re largely sung in a stripped-down rehearsal room.
The music is repetitive and unexciting, very like Joshua Bergasse’s choreography, which is neither humorous nor enjoyable.
Equally indecisive, “Smash” is on the fence as as to if “Bombshell” is an efficient or unhealthy musical. That ought to have been motion merchandise No. 1.
For instance, within the good backstage farce “Noises Off,” the play-within-a-play, “Nothing On,” is horrible. That’s a part of the joke. Identical with “Springtime for Hitler” in “The Producers.”
“Bombshell,” nevertheless, comes off as, I dunno, mediocre? It’s implied that duo Jerry and his spouse Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez) are flop factories who lazily rip off tunes from their previous, forgotten exhibits, like “The Accidental Rabbi.”
However the one cause “Smash” is on Broadway proper now could be as a result of Shaiman and Wittman’s songs from the collection nonetheless have admirers.
Why, then, are the fictional composers depicted as unreliable hacks who nobody appears to imagine in? It is unnecessary. Nothing does.
“Let Me Be Your Star” might be the manufacturing’s different motto. Each underbaked character aggressively competes for our consideration: a stern producer (Jacqueline B. Arnold), a Gen Z assistant (Nicholas Matos) and an neglected affiliate choreographer (Bella Coppola), amongst others.
The viewers roots for one particular person for about two minutes, after which goes again to furrowing their brows.
And nothing speaks to the wreckage greater than the truth that the villains are an performing trainer and TikTok.
All evening, no person — together with Hurder and Bowman — stands out. They’re not allowed to. And the musical isn’t actually a good ensemble piece, both. The messy materials forces the solid to mix into one banal blob, gifted although they’re.
“Smash” begins with Marilyn’s lyric: “Fade in on a girl.”
By curtain name, it sounds extra like, “Fade out on a show.”
