When the Broadway-themed drama Smash began its two-season run on NBC in 2012, the entire theater industry, it seemed then, was entranced. The lingo, the faces, the concerns – all seemed, if not entirely authentic, then at least clever enough to create some backstage buzz. Even with the series’ quick decline in quality and ratings, some sort of stage adaptation came to seem inevitable.
Thirteen years later, Smash The Musical arrives on Broadway with some of the most talented creatives and actors working today. More inspired by than based on, more fan fiction or parody than homage, the production opening tonight at the Imperial Theatre is more oddity than anything else.
Possibly too dissimilar in detail and tone from the series to please diehard fans – and they must be out there somewhere – yet relying on a nostalgia, however newly minted, that likely won’t exist in the general population (Boop, anyone?) Smash The Musical isn’t even as it confounds at least as often as it pleases.
Directed by the great Susan Stroman, a five-time Tony winner with The Producers to her credit, a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the duo behind, among others, Hairspray and the woefully underappreciated Some Like It Hot, Smash includes a book by Rick Elice (the unstoppable Jersey Boys) and Bob Martin, whose work on the delightful, theater-themed The Prom promised great things for the musical-within-a-musical project opening tonight.
Robyn Hurder and Brooks Ashmanskas
Paul Kolnik
It’s not that the musical all goes wrong, exactly. With a cast as good as this one – Robyn Hurder, The Prom‘s Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann and the invaluable Kristine Nielsen, just for starters – Smash is thoroughly watchable from start to rather overlong finish. Unlike the series, there isn’t the precipitous drop in quality that so alienated many of the original’s early fans. Instead, Smash The Musical starts just well enough, and stays there.
The musical excises all but one storyline from the series. Gone are the soapy entanglements of what was essentially a drama, turning only the main plot – about the making of a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe – into a broadly-played Broadway cartoon. That’s an idea that could work – Death Becomes Her did pretty much the same trick, albeit with a movie as inspiration, and is one of the best musicals currently on Broadway. Smash, well, isn’t.
The terrific Hurder plays Ivy Lynn, the (initially) sweet-natured Broadway star cast in a musical called Bombshell, a feel-good depiction of Monroe’s life that pointedly will not end with, as the enthusiastic if ever-panicked director Nigel puts it, “Marilyn lying in her bed naked and dead wrapped in a white satin sheet!” That’s not exactly a joke line, but with Nigel’s portrayer the always funny Brooks Ashmanskas delivering it, it might as well be.
When Bombshell‘s well-meaning book writer and lyricist Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez) gifts Ivy a book detailing Monroe’s devotion to The Actors Studio and The Method, trouble looms. “If I ever see you giving books to an actor again,” scolds Nigel, “I will replace you. With an app.”
Soon enough, the lovable, friend-to-all Ivy takes The Method to heart, insisting on being addressed only as Marilyn and taking on all the worst personality traits of the doomed movie star. She shows up late for work, pops uppers like candy, treats her crew and castmates, including best friend and understudy Karen (Caroline Bowman, great belter), like garbage and even hires an on-set, very intrusive acting coach (Nielsen, witch-cloaked in black as an exaggerated spin on Monroe’s real-life teacher Paula Strasberg).
Mutiny is inevitable, and soon enough Ivy is voted out and replaced with understudy Karen, who has the misfortune of eating a laxative-laced cupcake meant for Ivy and blows, so to speak, the show’s first performance before an invited audience. Enter associate director Chloe (Bella Coppola), a former actress with a terrific singing voice whose body size, she’s been told repeatedly, isn’t compatible with the career of a leading lady.
Guess who steps in and knocks ’em dead at the dress rehearsal?
So now Smash has at least one too many possible Marilyns, and whatever plot or best friend versus best friend conflict the “real” show has been building falls apart and doesn’t recover. Jokes that aren’t particularly funny in the first place are repeated endlessly, like Ivy’s pill-popping, the increasingly problematic drinking of composer (and Tracy’s husband) Jerry (John Behlmann), Nigel’s tantrums and the boss-underling banter between the grand, been-there-done-that producer Anita (a regal Jacqueline B. Arnold) and her wiseguy know-nothing Gen Z assistant Scott (Nicholas Matos).
Robyn Hurder and the cast of ‘Smash’
Matthew Murphy
If the book falters, the production numbers – some based on famous Marilyn images and tropes, like the Seven Year Itch‘s subway grate scene, and the Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend bit – are suitably flashy. Series fans will know most of the tunes – “Let Me Be Your Star,” “The National Pastime,” “Second Hand White Baby Grand,” “Let’s Be Bad,” among others – and if few of the songs leave a lasting impression, all are well-performed and convincingly sung.
Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the series, does the same here, to good effect. While the set seems a bit on the chintzy side, scenic designer Beowulf Boritt does his usual stellar work, assisted immensely by Ken Billington’s full-of-pizzazz lighting design. Alejo Vietti’s costume design is fine if unremarkable except for where it counts: The Marilyn outfits are terrific.
Perhaps most perplexing about Smash, though, is its weirdly cynical, ungenerous take on the Bombshell herself. For a musical, and a musical within a musical, that gives lip service to her cultural value, Smash The Musical treats Monroe as a perpetual punchline. Ivy-as-Marilyn is an inconsiderate, amphetamine guzzling faux-intellectual whose devotion to the acting craft is presented as a vainglorious affectation. This Marilyn is without even a smidge of the sweetness and vulnerability that features in even the most cliched takes on the icon. Hurder does her best with what she’s given, but we leave Smash The Musical baffled as to what all the fuss was about.
Title: Smash
Venue: Broadway’s Imperial Theatre
Director: Susan Stroman
Book: Bob Martin
Music: Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
Choreography: Joshua Bergasse
Cast: Robyn Hurder, Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann, Kristine Nielsen, Caroline Bowman, Jacqueline B. Arnold, Bella Coppola, Casey Garvin, Nicholas Matos, Megan Kane, with Wendi Bergamini, Sarah Bowden, Jacob Burns, Deanna Cudjoe, Chelle Denton, Daniel Gaymon, Merritt David Janes, Ndaya Dream Hoskins, David Paul Kidder, Ian Liberto, Libby Lloyd, McGee Maddox, Connor McRory, J Savage, Jake Trammel and Katie Webber.
Running time: 2 hr 30 min (including intermission)
