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When the Broadway-themed drama Smash started its two-season run on NBC in 2012, the whole theater trade, it appeared then, was entranced. The lingo, the faces, the considerations – all appeared, if not fully genuine, then not less than intelligent sufficient to create some backstage buzz. Even with the sequence’ fast decline in high quality and rankings, some form of stage adaptation got here to appear inevitable.
Thirteen years later, Smash The Musical arrives on Broadway with a number of the most gifted creatives and actors working at present. More impressed by than based mostly on, extra fan fiction or parody than homage, the manufacturing opening tonight on the Imperial Theatre is extra oddity than anything.
Possibly too dissimilar intimately and tone from the sequence to please diehard followers – and so they should be on the market someplace – but counting on a nostalgia, nevertheless newly minted, that seemingly received’t exist within the basic inhabitants (Boop, anybody?) Smash The Musical isn’t even because it confounds not less than as typically because it pleases.
Directed by the good Susan Stroman, a five-time Tony winner with The Producers to her credit score, a rating by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the duo behind, amongst others, Hairspray and the woefully underappreciated Some Like It Hot, Smash features a ebook by Rick Elice (the unstoppable Jersey Boys) and Bob Martin, whose work on the pleasant, theater-themed The Prom promised nice issues for the musical-within-a-musical challenge opening tonight.
Robyn Hurder and Brooks Ashmanskas
Paul Kolnik
It’s not that the musical all goes improper, precisely. With a forged pretty much as good as this one – Robyn Hurder, The Prom‘s Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann and the invaluable Kristine Nielsen, just for starters – Smash is thoroughly watchable from start to rather overlong finish. Unlike the series, there isn’t the precipitous drop in high quality that so alienated most of the authentic’s early followers. Instead, Smash The Musical begins simply effectively sufficient, and stays there.
The musical excises all however one storyline from the sequence. Gone are the soapy entanglements of what was basically a drama, turning solely the primary plot – concerning the making of a musical based mostly on the lifetime of Marilyn Monroe – right into a broadly-played Broadway cartoon. That’s an concept that would work – Death Becomes Her did just about the identical trick, albeit with a film as inspiration, and is without doubt one of the greatest musicals at the moment on Broadway. Smash, effectively, isn’t.
The terrific Hurder performs Ivy Lynn, the (initially) sweet-natured Broadway star forged in a musical known as Bombshell, a feel-good depiction of Monroe’s life that pointedly will not finish with, because the enthusiastic if ever-panicked director Nigel places it, “Marilyn lying in her bed naked and dead wrapped in a white satin sheet!” That’s not precisely a joke line, however with Nigel’s portrayer the all the time humorous Brooks Ashmanskas delivering it, it would as effectively be.
When Bombshell‘s well-meaning book writer and lyricist Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez) gifts Ivy a book detailing Monroe’s devotion to The Actors Studio and The Method, hassle looms. “If I ever see you giving books to an actor again,” scolds Nigel, “I will replace you. With an app.”
Soon sufficient, the lovable, friend-to-all Ivy takes The Method to coronary heart, insisting on being addressed solely as Marilyn and taking over all of the worst persona traits of the doomed film star. She reveals up late for work, pops uppers like sweet, treats her crew and castmates, together with greatest pal and understudy Karen (Caroline Bowman, nice belter), like rubbish and even hires an on-set, very intrusive appearing coach (Nielsen, witch-cloaked in black as an exaggerated spin on Monroe’s real-life instructor Paula Strasberg).
Mutiny is inevitable, and shortly sufficient Ivy is voted out and changed with understudy Karen, who has the misfortune of consuming a laxative-laced cupcake meant for Ivy and blows, so to talk, the present’s first efficiency earlier than an invited viewers. Enter affiliate director Chloe (Bella Coppola), a former actress with a terrific singing voice whose physique measurement, she’s been advised repeatedly, isn’t suitable with the profession of a number one woman.
Guess who steps in and knocks ’em useless on the costume rehearsal?
So now Smash has not less than one too many doable Marilyns, and no matter plot or greatest pal versus greatest pal battle the “real” present has been constructing falls aside and doesn’t recuperate. Jokes that aren’t notably humorous within the first place are repeated endlessly, like Ivy’s pill-popping, the more and more problematic consuming of composer (and Tracy’s husband) Jerry (John Behlmann), Nigel’s tantrums and the boss-underling banter between the grand, been-there-done-that producer Anita (a regal Jacqueline B. Arnold) and her wiseguy know-nothing Gen Z assistant Scott (Nicholas Matos).
Robyn Hurder and the forged of ‘Smash’
Matthew Murphy
If the ebook falters, the manufacturing numbers – some based mostly on well-known Marilyn photographs and tropes, just like the Seven Year Itch‘s subway grate scene, and the Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend bit – are suitably flashy. Series followers will know many of the tunes – “Let Me Be Your Star,” “The National Pastime,” “Second Hand White Baby Grand,” “Let’s Be Bad,” amongst others – and if few of the songs depart an enduring impression, all are well-performed and convincingly sung.
Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the sequence, does the identical right here, to good impact. While the set appears a bit on the chintzy facet, scenic designer Beowulf Boritt does his traditional stellar work, assisted immensely by Ken Billington’s full-of-pizzazz lighting design. Alejo Vietti’s costume design is okay if unremarkable aside from the place it counts: The Marilyn outfits are terrific.
Perhaps most perplexing about Smash, although, is its weirdly cynical, ungenerous tackle the Bombshell herself. For a musical, and a musical inside a musical, that provides lip service to her cultural worth, Smash The Musical treats Monroe as a perpetual punchline. Ivy-as-Marilyn is an thoughtless, amphetamine guzzling faux-intellectual whose devotion to the appearing craft is offered as a vainglorious affectation. This Marilyn is with out even a smidge of the sweetness and vulnerability that options in even probably the most cliched takes on the icon. Hurder does her greatest with what she’s given, however we depart Smash The Musical baffled as to what all of the fuss was about.
Title: Smash
Venue: Broadway’s Imperial Theatre
Director: Susan Stroman
Book: Bob Martin
Music: Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
Choreography: Joshua Bergasse
Cast: Robyn Hurder, Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann, Kristine Nielsen, Caroline Bowman, Jacqueline B. Arnold, Bella Coppola, Casey Garvin, Nicholas Matos, Megan Kane, with Wendi Bergamini, Sarah Bowden, Jacob Burns, Deanna Cudjoe, Chelle Denton, Daniel Gaymon, Merritt David Janes, Ndaya Dream Hoskins, David Paul Kidder, Ian Liberto, Libby Lloyd, McGee Maddox, Connor McRory, J Savage, Jake Trammel and Katie Webber.
Running time: 2 hr 30 min (together with intermission)