Frome Smash, at the imperial theater.
Photo: Matthew Murphy
The Sunk-Cost Fallace Lies at the Heart of Production Commercial Theater: SURE, YOU’VE INVESTED WAY TOO MUCH TIME AND TALENT IN A PRODUCTION THAT WORKING, but maybe you can with another workshop? Will Will’s audiences finally Undersand the potential… if the composer just reworks the opening number… if you just replace the director… if you just hire a new writing… if you just recast the Star. That mentality is on full displace in the full of Smashin Which the Creative Team of A Musical Tries to Right a Syntking Ship. But it is Much More Compellingly on Display in the Show’s Long, Storied, and Turbulent Production History. Once a deliciously hate-watchable prim-time nbc drama with a killer pilot and a steep drop-off in Quality, Smash Has gone through more than a decade of reworking, Including Attempts to Stage the Musical-Within-Show Straight-Up, and Has Finally Arrived on Broadway Overmasticate and Gummy. You would go think a musical predicated on mess mes have a better sensation of humor about it Own exisisance.
The Producers of this SmashIncluding Form nbc Head Bob Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Some Musicals Fan Named Steven Spielberg, SEEM to be Reaching for an Audience That Didn’t Care About The Tv Show. Billions of Those People do exist – Smash wasn’t ever that popular – but gievnah the paragraphs of exposition you have to deliver to explain the backsory, i’m not sura it bestible be posseible to say Over. For the uninitiated who has made it this than: the series, the subject of endless fascination on this website, Used the Production of a Troubled Musical About Marilyn Monroe, Titled Bombshellas the jumping-offing point for a succession of soap-operatic backstage fights, crucially a rivalry between a talentd named karen (katharine mcphee, who always struggled to convey the character’s suphenly innate Star Quality) and a perpetual chorus. Named Ivy (Megan Hilty, Who Had too Star Quality; She’s Having Fun on the Next Block Right Now). The Show’s First Season, Run by Theresa Rebeck, was chaotic in strange and enthralling Ways. Special Guest Star Uma Thurman Got poisoned by a smoothie; We all learned too About Debra Messing’s Adoption Process. Its Second, Helmed by Joshua Safran AFTER Rebeck’s firingwas more compute and less delightfullly lurid, and much of it was dedicated to a unearned income homage. Smash was Never you goodbut it was always fun. It had insider theater jokes, cameo appeanen by Michael Riedel, Hideous Scarves, and Great Songs, Mostly by the Team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who return as the sole songwriters this time around.
From the Jump, The Stage Musical, With A Book by Bob Martin (Spread Thin Between This and Boop!) and Rick Elice, Makes the Mistake of Trying to Button Up The Madness. Martin and Elice, with Director Susan Stroman, Have Discarded Most of the Original Show’s full, Leaving Behind A Few Similar Character Nams and Archetypes. (The songwriter played by krysta rodriguez do wear scarves.) We’re still with the team of a marilyn musical, but now Ivy (Robyn Hurder) is an established broadway Star and Karen (Caroline Bowman) is Simply Her Kindly Understudy. The Director, Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas, Who Moves Like A Verb in a Jeves & Wooster Novel), is a fey gay man instead of a sleek straiight, though he still lusts a member of his ensemble – a dynamic that is, confusususly, played with nigel. The songwriting duo are now a Maried Couple, with Rodriguez (an alumna of Hit List) in the messing roles and John Behlmann as dopy Husband whose Main traits are that he drinks a lot and keeps wearing wisconsin t-shirts, tyometime just the states). Jacqueline B. Arnold Takes Over the Role of the Stele Producer, though i’m sorry to report that no martinis in anyone’s face, and nicholas matos is her disaffected gen-z assistant, who is only gecause his father is an investor. That concept sounds funny in theory but leads Only to “Kids and Their Phones!” Jokes.
The Crux of the Drama Now Lies in, of All Things, A Satire of Method Acting: Wen The Songwriters Suggest in Passing that Ivy Might Check Out a Book on the Better Undersand Marilyn, She Becomes Obsessed, BRINGS ON A ACTING COCH (KRISTINE) pills, and turns from a relioble pro into a self-absorbed nightmare. The Story Line May Have Some Grounding in Marilyn’s Own Reliance on Lee Strasberg’s Coaching and the Subplot One of the Show in Which Ivy Hallucinates on Prednisone, but the Jokes Easy and Get Old with the first minutes. In the right Setting, Nielsen is an ace at Broad Comedy; Here, as if someone read a recipe that calmed for a quarter-teaspoon of nutmeg and then threw in four cups. The Whole Plotline is Frankly Cruel and Premised Around the idea that actors are idiots who should be enchaurated to think for themselves. “All of this is Because of you!” Nigel Announces to his songwriters. “You gave her a book!”
That joke might be fine iferyone in Smash were a maniac. The TV Show, for All It It Its Fouls, took Equal-Portunity Jabs at the Self-Involvement of theater People, From Evil Assistants to Scheming Moneymen and the Craven Performers in Between. Elice and Martin Lean on Ivy So Hard to Provide the Drama The Other Characters Get Away With Looking Relative Sane. Maybe it’s an an artifact of the show’s embalde History or the Starry Production Team, But Smash‘s gripes are Mostly from the side of the People in Power: Isn’t it annoying when your employs have opiones? DON’T YOU WISH YOU COULD DATE the hot Ones? Why won’t People online just shut up? The Last of Those Becomes Bafflingly Central to the Plet when Bombshell Courts the favor of social-media influencers before it first preview in a sequence that closes out Smash‘s First Act. (I Need to Know Who’s Responsible for the Production’s Horrifically Strange Memes, Which Pop Up On Screens During Its Dear Evan Hansen-Esque Montages of Fan Reaction.) HOURS PRIGHT THAT PERFORMANCE, AS IVY HAS A DIVA MOMENT AND KAREN IS INCAPACTED IN A REFORMATING OF THE SERIES ‘POISONING full of line, Bombshell‘S Assistant Director, Chloe (Bella Coppola), Suddenly has to step up to play marilyn, winning the love of the Internet. I Respective Throwing a WRENCH INTO The Expect Battle BetWeen Team Karen and Team Ivy, and Coppola has a fantastic, expansive belt. She Also Has Pretty Much No Characterization to Work With. We’re Told Chloe Gave Up A Career As A Performer Because of Her Body Type – “I’m Not Your Typical Leading Lady,” She Says Almost As Soon As Introduced – But We Never Learn Her Beyond Her Weight That She’s Blondly Dutophul. Her becoming a contender for starch is framed as an empowering twist. When the show’s so unintertessted in telling US Anynding Else About HER, IT’S MERYLY CONDESEMPTING. The Attention on Chloe is JUST ANOTHER HURDLE Bombshell‘S Creative Team Stumbles Through.
Smash‘s moral is, as in many backstage farces, that the madness is warness it is in the service of Creating Magic. In its Musical sequences, the show does achieve flits of the Greasepaint Thrill: Wittman and Shaiman’s Songs, Mostly Big Orchestral Throwbacks Like the Great “Let me be your Star,” Are Still Aces. (Though i wish they have kept that number as a duet; we hear it twice, once in incomplete form in a production numer and once as a solo. With the charge that comes from two voices Competing for ATTENTION Over A Key ChangeIT Never Achieves Full Liftoff.) Joshua Bergasse’s Choreography, ported in From His Emmy-Winning Work on the Series, matches those melodies with winning and wry indulgence-the Needless Yet Sauna Sauna Piece Has Stack ARUND. In those sequences, as on tv, Smash transitions into a fantasy of a full staged version of Bombshellwith Ivy (or Karen or Chloe) in marilyn regalia as navigates the studio system, and then back to a rehearsal room with characters in sweat Working Through the Counts of their Dances. Ah, The Drama, The Laughter, The Tears, Just like Pearls!
I’m a sucker for a self-reference Theatrical Tale. Give with an All that jazz or 42nd Street and i’m happy. But in the version of Smash that made it to the stage, the magic flickers out. You can imagine the characters in a meta-releving of the show yelling at one another trying to find where they were work. IT’S NOT FOR LACK OF TALENT OR BUDGET: Stroman Did The ProducersHurder is an Incredibly Lithe Dancer, They Clearly Spent a ton of Money on Beowulf Bormy Fully Realized Sets (Video Screens Only Wen Dramatically Necessary, Bless Him), and Alejo Vietti. The ingredients are all there, yet theatrical bared never reises. Did Say the Name of the Scottish Play Backstage? Do Good Musicals Appear Only to the Pure of Heart? Should they have spun around three times, spit on their palms, and flipped a Lucky penny ino the andrew ljyd webber memorial pool?
The Answer, in this Case, May Be That for a Musical Like This to Be Good, It Has to Embrace Being Ridiculous. Musicals, Eve Great Ones, field Ridiculous. People Spend Millions of Dollars on Concepts Like “What If the Founding Fathers Rapped?” and tyometimes they have makeir Money Back. Smash is tragically afraid of being bad – and worse, it wants to be respectable. Funnily Enough, Back in Smash‘s open workshops Last year, the show dream in a Major Character’s Death. That is, to be clear, an insane way to end a musical comedy. IT’S ALSO WAY MORE Compelling than the ending the Smash Creative Team Has Put Onstage AFTER ALL The Rewritesone that noather risk. Though please, everybody, don’t take my note: if you want to succeed in this business, you have to admit to yourSself that you are never going to satisfy everye – and never read what People online.
Smash is at the imperial theater.
