When the Broadway-themed drama Smash started its two-season run on NBC in 2012, your complete theater trade, it appeared then, was entranced. The lingo, the faces, the issues – all appeared, if not fully genuine, then no 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 look inevitable.
13 years later, Smash The Musical arrives on Broadway with among the most proficient creatives and actors working as we speak. Extra impressed by than primarily based on, extra fan fiction or parody than homage, the manufacturing opening tonight on the Imperial Theatre is extra oddity than the rest.
Probably too dissimilar intimately and tone from the sequence to please diehard followers – they usually should be on the market someplace – but counting on a nostalgia, nonetheless newly minted, that possible received’t exist within the basic inhabitants (Boop, anybody?) Smash The Musical isn’t even because it confounds no 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 Scorching, Smash features a e book by Rick Elice (the unstoppable Jersey Boys) and Bob Martin, whose work on the pleasant, theater-themed The Promenade promised nice issues for the musical-within-a-musical mission opening tonight.
Robyn Hurder and Brooks Ashmanskas
Paul Kolnik
It’s not that the musical all goes incorrect, precisely. With a solid pretty much as good as this one – Robyn Hurder, The Promenade‘s Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann and the invaluable Kristine Nielsen, only for starters – Smash is totally watchable from begin to fairly overlong end. In contrast to the sequence, there isn’t the precipitous drop in high quality that so alienated most of the unique’s early followers. As a substitute, 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 primarily a drama, turning solely the principle plot – concerning the making of a musical primarily based on the lifetime of Marilyn Monroe – right into a broadly-played Broadway cartoon. That’s an concept that would work – Dying Turns into Her did just about the identical trick, albeit with a film as inspiration, and is likely one of the greatest musicals presently on Broadway. Smash, effectively, isn’t.
The terrific Hurder performs Ivy Lynn, the (initially) sweet-natured Broadway star solid in a musical referred to 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 mendacity in her mattress bare and useless wrapped in a white satin sheet!” That’s not precisely a joke line, however with Nigel’s portrayer the at all times humorous Brooks Ashmanskas delivering it, it’d as effectively be.
When Bombshell‘s well-meaning e book author and lyricist Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez) items Ivy a e book detailing Monroe’s devotion to The Actors Studio and The Methodology, hassle looms. “If I ever see you giving books to an actor once more,” scolds Nigel, “I’ll substitute you. With an app.”
Quickly sufficient, the lovable, friend-to-all Ivy takes The Methodology to coronary heart, insisting on being addressed solely as Marilyn and taking up 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 trainer 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 appropriate with the profession of a number one girl.
Guess who steps in and knocks ’em useless on the costume rehearsal?
So now Smash has no less than one too many potential Marilyns, and no matter plot or greatest pal versus greatest pal battle the “actual” present has been constructing falls aside and doesn’t get better. Jokes that aren’t significantly 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 solid of ‘Smash’
Matthew Murphy
If the e book falters, the manufacturing numbers – some primarily based on well-known Marilyn pictures and tropes, just like the Seven Yr Itch‘s subway grate scene, and the Diamonds Are A Lady’s Greatest Good friend bit – are suitably flashy. Collection followers will know many of the tunes – “Let Me Be Your Star,” “The Nationwide Pastime,” “Second Hand White Child Grand,” “Let’s Be Dangerous,” amongst others – and if few of the songs depart a long-lasting impression, all are well-performed and convincingly sung.
Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the sequence, does the identical right here, to good impact. Whereas the set appears a bit on the chintzy aspect, scenic designer Beowulf Boritt does his normal stellar work, assisted immensely by Ken Billington’s full-of-pizzazz lighting design. Alejo Vietti’s costume design is okay if unremarkable apart from the place it counts: The Marilyn outfits are terrific.
Maybe 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 introduced 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
E book: Bob Martin
Music: Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
Choreography: Joshua Bergasse
Forged: 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.
Operating time: 2 hr 30 min (together with intermission)
