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 solely genuine, then at the very least intelligent sufficient to create some backstage buzz. Even with the collection’ fast decline in high quality and scores, some form of stage adaptation got here to appear inevitable.
13 years later, Smash The Musical arrives on Broadway with among the most proficient creatives and actors working at present. Extra 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.
Probably too dissimilar intimately and tone from the collection to please diehard followers – and so they should be on the market someplace – but counting on a nostalgia, nonetheless newly minted, that doubtless received’t exist within the basic inhabitants (Boop, anybody?) Smash The Musical isn’t even because it confounds at the very least as usually 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 Sizzling, 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 flawed, precisely. With a solid nearly 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 completely watchable from begin to moderately overlong end. Not like the collection, there isn’t the precipitous drop in high quality that so alienated lots of the authentic’s early followers. As an alternative, Smash The Musical begins simply effectively sufficient, and stays there.
The musical excises all however one storyline from the collection. Gone are the soapy entanglements of what was basically a drama, turning solely the principle plot – in regards to the making of a musical based mostly on the lifetime of Marilyn Monroe – right into a broadly-played Broadway cartoon. That’s an thought that would work – Dying Turns into Her did just about the identical trick, albeit with a film as inspiration, and is among the greatest musicals at the moment 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 all the time humorous Brooks Ashmanskas delivering it, it would 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 Technique, hassle looms. “If I ever see you giving books to an actor once more,” scolds Nigel, “I’ll change you. With an app.”
Quickly sufficient, the lovable, friend-to-all Ivy takes The Technique 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 exhibits up late for work, pops uppers like sweet, treats her crew and castmates, together with greatest buddy 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 informed 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 at the very least one too many doable Marilyns, and no matter plot or greatest buddy versus greatest buddy battle the “actual” 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 solid of ‘Smash’
Matthew Murphy
If the e-book falters, the manufacturing numbers – some based mostly on well-known Marilyn photographs and tropes, just like the Seven Yr Itch‘s subway grate scene, and the Diamonds Are A Lady’s Finest Pal bit – are suitably flashy. Sequence followers will know a lot of the tunes – “Let Me Be Your Star,” “The Nationwide Pastime,” “Second Hand White Child Grand,” “Let’s Be Unhealthy,” amongst others – and if few of the songs go away an enduring impression, all are well-performed and convincingly sung.
Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the collection, does the identical right here, to good impact. Whereas the set appears a bit on the chintzy aspect, scenic designer Beowulf Boritt does his regular 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 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 go away 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)
