Two famous bombshells of the 20th century are headlining on Broadway, where beauty, talent and a firm grip on the public imagination are often a sure bet. Withsky-high hemlines and sex-kitten purrs, Betty Boop and Marilyn Monroe have been no strangers to fawning attention or to the perils of objectification. What sort of women can we allow them to be today?
Fortunately, the new musicals built around their legacies are, first and foremost, splendid showcases for powerhouse performers. As the cartoon vixen sprung to life in “Boop!,” Jasmine Amy Rogers gives the most sensational star-making Broadway turn in years — funny, captivating, a total knockout. It would be impossible to take your eyes off her if the rest of the production, directed and choreographed with maximalist razzle-dazzle by Jerry Mitchell, weren’t such an eye-popping spectacle.
A trio of mighty belters takes on Monroe — or rather, the part of Monroe in the musical within the new musical “Smash,” based on the NBC series about making a Broadway show. All three sing with showstopping force: Robyn Hurder as the diva lead of “Bombshell,” the Monroe-inspired musical; Caroline Bowman as her gracious understudy; and Bella Coppola as an aspiring director who gets her moment to shine. Never mind that Monroe was more siren than foghorn; their resounding pipes are the highlight of an otherwise thinly conceived spin-off.
End of carousel
Where “Boop!” excels and “Smash” falters is in transforming a familiar persona or property into something fresh and wholly theatrical. If Betty Boop only exists as a silhouette in the back of your mind, “Boop!” smartly turns that vague familiarity into the genesis for a cheeky and original family musical. But “Smash” gambles too liberally on affection for the short-lived series — and Monroe’s abiding mystique — and winds up caught in an anodyne screen-to-stage limbo.
Betty’s leap from black-and-white into today’s world marks the start of her onstage adventure. In her animated plane, Betty is an indisputable star who can play any part but has no idea who she is — a helpful starting point for anyone who shares the sentiment. Longing to escape her fame, she bounds into a contraption invented by her Grampy (a brilliantly hammy Stephen DeRosa), teleports to present-day New York Comic-Con and falls into the arms of a potential love interest (Ainsley Melham) whose quasi kid sister (Angelica Hale) happens to be her biggest fan. Faith Prince, herself known for embodying pinched-voice broads, gets a lovely featured role as an astrophysicist.
There is a delightful cartoon logic to all this. Betty follows in the recent footsteps of Barbie, who visits the real world in her 2023 movie, marveling at its many wonders and exploring what she means here. But Betty, who first appeared in 1930 (as part French poodle) and has experienced many iterations since, isn’t on an apology tour, because she doesn’t have a ubiquitous or contested reputation to defend. She has the more straightforward but daunting task of convincing audiences to fall in love, many for the first time, with a somewhat unnervingly cutesy-sexy drawing.
Rogers treads an exceedingly fine line as Betty, turning a latent avatar into a bubbly and appealing woman who’s both role model to a young girl and potential partner to a grown man. It’s a deceptively sophisticated performance that bounces from innocent charm one moment to knowing flirtation the next. Conceptually, or in different hands, “Boop!” might have been a squick-fest, which only highlights its creative triumph.
Befitting Betty’s flapper free-spirit, joy and jazz are everywhere in the brassy score, with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and music by David Foster, making his theater debut. Foster, a prolific producer and composer, has an exceptional hand with songs that distill concise narrative and tender feeling. (He worked with Whitney Houston on her Grammy-winning cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”) High-energy numbers, including an opener that reels with a tapping kickline, give the show a rollicking momentum.
Mitchell’s staging fuses the zaniness of Betty’s animated shorts with old-fashioned Broadway spectacle, targeting all ages with the threat of sensory overload. (The production is a love letter to New York, and its transition to color resembles a candy-store explosion in Times Square.) The combination works, in large part thanks to synergy among designers David Rockwell (set), Philip S. Rosenberg (lights) and Finn Ross (projections), who create a trippy and versatile canvas for the dimension-hopping action, and Gregg Barnes, whose costumes sparkle and surprise.
The book by Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”) zips with silly jokes and manages to drum up an endearing and cuckoo plot — in which Betty is basically a messiah — while giving the near-century-old character new life. Like most second acts, this one meanders and then scrambles toward resolution. (Betty’s adorable marionette dog, handled by Phillip Huber, plays an incredulously outsize role.) But “Boop!” pulls off a convincing modern makeover — she was never meant to be Betty Friedan, but she has a moral compass, blunt objects to clobber grabby men and, most importantly, a full heart.
“Smash,” a behind-the-scenes look at the bumpy road to mounting a new musical, at least demonstrates what an achievement that can turn out to be. But the concept gives way to more than one cringy moment when it’s obvious that “Smash” itself, directed here by Susan Stroman, is in trouble. True to the spirit of its source material, and leveraging Monroe as little more than a totem, the show stalls out delivering misguided fan service in flat sitcom rhythms.
The two-season series that premiered in 2012 was self-consciously soapy but earnest in a way that made it deliciously camp. Created by Theresa Rebeck and based on an idea by filmmaker Steven Spielberg (who’s also a producer here), the series took itself just seriously enough that its best humor was unintentional. That tone is difficult to recapture onstage while also giving audiences a new musical (about a new musical) that stands on its own.
The score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”) builds off the series’ most memorable song, “Let Me Be Your Star,” a rousing anthem of showbiz ambition that’s reprised here several times. It’s one of the few songs written for “Bombshell” that resonates clearly with the backstage drama of putting on a show. Too many others relate to scenes from Monroe’s life but are only vaguely connected to tensions among the characters onstage, including the bickering married writers (played by Krysta Rodriguez and John Behlmann). Kristine Nielsen plays an eccentric method-acting coach — a figure who actually lurked around the edges of Monroe’s career — like something out of “The Seventh Seal,” turning Hurder’s amiable professional into a nightmare.
As their droll and besieged director, Brooks Ashmanskas fires on every available cylinder, making the most of the quip-packed script, which otherwise lacks narrative drive from one scene to the next. (“Pace is very important,” he tells the team in rehearsal. No kidding.) Co-authored by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys”) and Martin (who also wrote “Boop!”), the book tosses off plenty of jokes, but too many float by with the ease of background television.
Unlike Betty’s madcap star vehicle, “Smash” doesn’t move with verve or purpose.
In part, that’s because “Smash” is about the making of an imperiled show, whose hiccups and headaches become its own. Nor does the musical make a winning case for why newcomers or even fans of the series ought to turn out. Dressing up a bygone dame, or a property built around her fame, is no guarantee her magic will rub off.
Boop!, ongoing at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York. About 2 hours and 40 minutes with an intermission. boopthemusical.com.
Smash, ongoing at the Imperial Theatre in New York. About 2 hours and 40 minutes with an intermission. smashbroadway.com.
