Imperial Theatre, New York, NY.
April 5, 2025.
Smash, the NBC musical drama of 2012, was by no means actually a smash. Regardless of that, it garnered a cult following of musical theater devotees, and when previews opened to the re-imagined Broadway present in March 2025, they have been out in full drive. No matter what any critic would possibly write concerning the intricacies of advantage or lack thereof, the viewers of the preview present I attended was nothing however rousingly enthusiastic. The traditional show-within-a-show actually has all of it. There are numerous shiny objects bobbling on the floor of depth. However, they by no means dive down to truly search it. From my seat, although, that was simply superb. The shiny objects have been shimmering, buoyant, enjoyable to observe and made fairly sounds.
The story is the convoluted journey {that a} Broadway present takes on its method to opening evening. Whereas the TV present was a drama, this musical absolutely embraces comedy. Every character is sort of excessive, however in a Michael Scott from The Workplace kind of approach – so absurd it’s intestine busting. The guide is a bit meandering, with a number of too many storylines to every develop their depth. However the strong performing drives the present, together with the belting musical numbers and pleasant dancing.
Merely, there’s a Broadway present within the works — an illusively lighthearted telling of Marilyn Monroe’s life, however not one of the darkish stuff. Whether or not this method works is a battle between the creatives, made worse when the lead actress taking part in Marilyn goes into full methodology performing mode, inflicting all types of issues. One consequence being a query as to who will play Marilyn on opening evening? The reply is much less necessary than the journey to determine it out, because the viewers is handled to a number of variations of the driving music, “Let Me Be Your Star”, from a number of of the candidates. We heard it not less than thrice from three completely different singers, and I couldn’t select a favourite. These women can all sing.
Brooks Ashmanskas performs the director Nigel, serving up comedy on a silver platter of bitchy theater one-liners like a cater-waiter who doesn’t care in the event you take a canapé or not. However you do each time, since you simply need to have another tasty morsel. His presence onstage is definitely worth the worth of admission alone. The small however mighty dancer refrain is flexible, hysterical and akin to proficient sticky glue that retains the present intact – provided that that sticky glue was the type with glitter in it, these ubiquitous shiny objects of enjoyment.
There are quite a lot of layers to this model of Smash, most of them superficial. That mentioned, I don’t want an enormous, showy, belt-y, glittering, over-the-top Broadway present to have the depth of Les Misérables, Lease and even the TV present (though one might argue how a lot depth that had both). The 2-and-a-half-hour run time felt like 45 minutes, my abdomen harm from laughing once I left, and I walked out of the theater able to belt a ballad and twirl in the midst of 45th Avenue in a (fake) fur coat.
By Emily Sarkissian of Dance Informa.
