Some shows are “what?” shows, leaving you baffled. Perhaps they involve roller-skating trains or shrouds of Turin.
Others are “how?” shows, as in: Dear God, how did that happen?
But the most disappointing subgenre of musical, at least in terms of opportunity cost, is the “why?” show: a well-crafted, charmingly performed, highly professional production that nobody asked for. Its intentions are foggy and sometimes suspicious.
“Boop! The Musical” — now playing at the Broadhurst Theater, in a production directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell — is a “why?” show par excellence.
And excellence it has. As Betty, the flapper of early talkie cartoons, Jasmine Amy Rogers is immensely likable. She sings fabulously, sports a credible perma-smile, nails all the Boop mannerisms and has a fetching way with a tossed-off line. I can’t imagine anyone making more of the exhausting opportunity, let alone in a Broadway debut.
She is ably supported by other young talent in featured roles, luxury-cast veterans doing their damnedest and a hard-working ensemble selling Mitchell’s insistent, imaginative, precision-drilled dances. When his pinwheel kick-lines hop in unison, not one foot among 26 is left on the floor.
Or make that 27, because Pudgy, Betty’s pug, a marionette with a lolling pink tongue operated by the puppeteer Phillip Huber, sometimes shakes a leg too.
And wait, there’s more: David Foster’s music, in a jazzy brass-and-reeds Cy Coleman vein, pops nicely; the lyrics, by Susan Birkenhead, are far better crafted than you dare hope these days. To the extent it is possible to enjoy the story’s themes — the power of music, the way color comes into your life when you love — it is often because she encapsulates them so amusingly. I laughed out loud at her show-off rhyme of “It girls” and “spit curls.”
But none of that explains or justifies the show’s existence. Nor, despite enormous effort, can the book by Bob Martin. In building a case for a vintage piece of intellectual property — Betty was born as a half-dog in 1930 — Martin winds up replicating the kind of musical he roasted in “The Drowsy Chaperone” (1998) and the delusional creatives he pierced in “The Prom” (2016). That show’s imaginary “Eleanor! The Eleanor Roosevelt Musical,” is no less ludicrous than the real-life “Boop! The Musical.”
Granted, Broadway history has proved that ludicrousness is not in itself a deterrent to enjoyment. But laboriousness is, and it’s only with the groaning of heavy machinery underneath it that “Boop!” approaches the semblance of a lighthearted surface.
The premise, though silly, is the least of it: Betty, a quasi-human cartoon in a black-and-white world, stars in animated Fleischer Studios shorts. (Max Fleischer created the character; the studio named for him made the movies.) Though reporters fawn over her as “a singer, a dancer, an actress, a star beloved by millions,” she doesn’t know who she really is.
Yes, the musical rests on the identity crisis of a smudge of inked celluloid.
A time-travel machine created by Grampy (Stephen DeRosa) provides the way out of the crisis, dumping Betty in current-day New York City. At the Javits Center during Comic Con, she adapts perhaps faster than we do to the bizarrely dressed and garishly colorful Oz-like new world. (Costumes by Gregg Barnes, lighting by Philip S. Rosenberg.)
Also as in Oz, Betty acquires three companions: Trisha (Angelica Hale), a young Boop fanatic she meets at the convention; Dwayne (Ainsley Melham), a jazz musician who is maybe Trisha’s cousin, but it’s not very clear; and Carol (Anastacia McCleskey), a campaign manager who is maybe Dwayne’s mother and definitely Trisha’s guardian. Because wouldn’t you know it, Trisha, like yet another piece of ancient IP, is an orphan.
And then there’s Valentina, an astrophysicist who, 40 years earlier, hooked up with Grampy when he visited the real world. The best thing to say about her is that she’s played by Faith Prince, looking game, if understandably confused.
In any case, Grampy and Valentina reunite when he returns to the real world to reclaim Betty, without whom the black-and-white world at home is fading. But will she go back with him, now that, with the help of her new friends, she is involved in a mayoral election, a sanitation scandal and a feminist quest to take charge of her identity?
I wish the show had taken charge of its identity too. Instead, one feels at all times the heavy hooves of a marketing imperative. The brand discipline is punishing; in David Rockwell’s scenic design, even the proscenium has spit curls.
And poor Trisha, hasn’t she lived through enough without being turned into a brand ambassador? “Betty Boop has been famous everywhere for like a hundred years!” she says, as one does. “Betty Boop is strong and smart and confident and capable.” She even gets a song, called “Portrait of Betty,” that hymns Boop’s praises as if she were, well, Eleanor Roosevelt: “She is not afraid to fight / For all the people who cannot defend themselves.” In short, as a typically well turned Birkenhead lyric puts it: “She has spunk, she has spine, she’s a saint, bottom line.”
And there it is. The bottom line.
Betty Boop, if not the earliest cartoons she appears in, is still under copyright protection. No doubt the Fleischer heirs, with one eye on “Barbie,” would like to exploit their biggest star before she goes bust. Fair enough; who wouldn’t? But a merch grab — in the lobby a plushie Pudgy goes for $35 — is not the same as a musical. The answer to “why?” should not come from mere marketeers.
Boop! The Musical
At the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; boopthemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions.
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