Mounting a Broadway musical is an expensive proposition, in the ballpark of $25 million, and risky if it happens to be a new, untried show. So why would producers base one on a mediocre TV series that only lasted for two seasons? Maybe it was because all but one of the songs were already written and the story-within-a-story was developed, somewhat. But building from mediocre doesn’t make great. In the case of Smash at the Imperial Theater it just creates more mediocracy. Even veteran Tony Award-winning director Susan Stroman can’t redeem it.
For me the biggest weakness is the book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice. The theatrical show is being billed as a musical comedy (the series was more of a melodrama) but their intended laugh lines and jokes are so lame only one or two are somewhat funny but then forgotten in a minute. The 18 energetic songs are by Marc Shaiman (music) and Scott Wittman and Shaiman (lyrics).
For anyone who liked the TV series — Is there anyone out there?— the writers have made major changes. The basic story is the same, a show about people trying to put on a musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell. Martin and Elice have focused on the competition over who will play Monroe to the exclusion of most of the relationships featured in the series. They’ve made the initial choice an established Broadway diva, Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder), as opposed to the mid-level actress played by Megan Hilty in the series. She’s chronically late and tempestuous to work with.
Her longtime understudy, Karen (Caroline Bowman; Katharine McPhee in the series), fills in for Ivy on her many absences. She is equally as talented and is also dependable. The series kept people wondering who would end up with the part. The writers have added a third contender, Chloe (Bella Coppola), an associate director who says she’s happy to have gotten out of the competitive acting world but after she’s encouraged to sing one song, the composer, Jerry (John Behlmann), is convinced she should be cast. Voting then goes on between Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas,) the director, Anita (Jacqueline B. Arnold), the lead producer, and Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez), the lyricist who is married to Jerry.
The trouble with making this competition the center of the show is that none of the three characters is developed enough for us to care about. We know little of them other than Ivy was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs to support them, Karen is always an understudy and Chloe quit her acting career. In the series other plots were spinning. The songwriting team, played by Broadway veterans Debra Messing (Julia) and Christian Borle (Tom), weren’t a couple. Tension came from Julia’s relationship with her husband, Frank (Brian D’Arcy James), a high school chemistry teacher on whom she cheated, and Tom’s search for love. The director, called Jack (Derek Wills), was played as an overbearing perfectionist who slept with women who worked for or wanted to work for him. In the Broadway variation Nigel is a silly wimp who never could have handled steering a Broadway musical.
The worst change from the series is the utterly, totally and completely annoy character of Susan (Kristine Nielsen) who was hired by Ivy as an acting coach. Dressed from head to toe in black with a black scarf wounded so tightly around her head that only her face and big glasses are seen, she looks like a religious peasant. She hangs around rehearsals and encourages Ivy to stop cold to consult her before delivering every line, even if one of them is only a single word. She’s meant to be a comic character but distracts big time from whatever interest you may be developing in Ivy, or the show.
What I liked: I want to give full praise to all three of the would-be Monroes, each with gorgeous voices that don’t devolve into that screeching but popular Broadway belt. Joshua Bergasse’s choreography is sexy and sweeping (he also choreographed the series) and Alejo Vietti’s costumes are exquisite.
No comments:
Post a Comment