No expense was obviously spared to allow Boop! To take the emblematic jazz age valve of Max Fleischer – complete with a courageous mine, a Va -Va -Foom figure and a creaky baby voice – out of the silent era in black and white in a singular finish of joy. Marsonnate by the director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell, the talent is wherever you look at, and decent songs are wherever you listen to.
However, all these efforts are at the service of one of the most clumsy scenarios that Broadway has encountered for years, with cardboard characters who only serve the objectives of the plot, a book that does not listen to the words and the dialogue that does not listen to. To quote the king of Siam, who had a very good booklet the supporter: is a perplexity.
Or maybe not so confusing, if you feel a look fixed on Return to the future with its frantic waders forward and back in time, and an even more pronounced eye on Barbie. But there is no Greta Gerwig to modulate a thoughtful survey on the potential of fictitious fictitious icons as role models. Instead, the Bob Martin booklet (The Somnolate Riding Hood) Consignant to have an occasional question of a journalist instantly provokes an existential crisis in our Betty. In fact, she says: I’m not kidding: “I don’t know who I am!”. While the men pursue her in a room “with drooling over their mouths.” (This of a star whose opening number boasts of the agency and the power of women in all its roles, from Western Fast Gun to the First World War Flying Ace.)
(Read Frank Scheck ★★★★ ☆ Review here.))
Anyway, sympathetic to his desire for singing song to spend “an ordinary day”, Daffy Relative Grampy (Stephen Derosa) presents a machine he invented to travel to another world (ours), while instantly warning it Unable to use The device with which he did everything possible to try it. There could be catastrophic consequenceshe warned; However, “if you combine it, they don’t know Adam,” he promises, after being himself. Indeed, she lands in Manhattan’s comic strip in 2025, where everyone knows her.
And so it goes, contradiction after contradiction, ADH HOC plotting the route, the rules of time and reality asserted and then raped for convenience. Very few occurs in act one, while act two is loaded with dizzyingly introduced and just as quickly wrapped. The stakes are weak, even nonexistent, everywhere.
But does it all matter? If Fred Ebb was right, that no one pays attention to the booklet, then Boop! Obtains a decided advantage in the face of its many warnings. The words of Susan Birkenhead can be lacking in mind, but they rhyme and end pleasantly, and the tunes of David Foster, winner of a Grammy, are sufficiently catchy that this one (that is to say) can easily sing when this ball begins to bounce back. Jerry Mitchell’s ability to build musical numbers with huge ovations is of course well established after Bedside And Boots et al., And much in evidence here, with a tireless whole in its service.
As for directors, the reports of the Chicago test that a new star was born is exact. Jasmine Amy Rogers is the real deal, a triple threat as an actor, singer and dance with irresistible warmth, as well as the laser home of which only the best thesps can boast. It would be too easy to give the role with an occasional wink to the public, but Rogers respects Betty and refuses condescend. And if the mark of a future legend is that it doesn’t matter what’s going on, you cannot take your eyes off – well, the case closed.
And there is another superstar in the composition on the scene: Ainsley Melham as Betty de Betty today. Dwayne’s dream for life is to join the house group of a nightclub, but don’t worry too much, keep an eye on Melham. Comparisons with Gene Kelly are not unapt, give a giant smile and the apparent will to enter the dance movements at each stage. He is about to play all the roles that Hugh Jackman Australian aged, and if they make a musical on the life of Pete Buttigieg (think about it! Pete!), Melham is a dead ringtone.
The star distribution is not so lucky in what they give them, but they give everything. Derosa could use time – and funnier jokes – to establish Grampy for spectators who do not know the slapping way of the cartoon character (which the actor nicks perfectly). The Prince of the Great Faith is wasted in an artificial role as a break in love with Grampy in 2005, and the two are struggling with a useless duo echoing “You are timeless for me” Bedside Without jokes. There is a quick villain of Erich Bergen (Jersey Boys), but he drives By-Golly on the stage while he has it. He deserves a spectacle built around him, just like Anastacia McCleskey, here an assistant of the candidate for the corrupt town hall of Bergen. She and her niece Trisha (an Angelica hates aggressively early), the guides of Betty towards our reality, are fine, and Phillip Huber, puppeteer for the Pudgy dog of Betty, is even better.
Rogers and Melham Sashay make their way through the brilliant vision of David Rockwell in Manhattan like Fred and Cyd The group groupCompleted by funny trips in the monochromatic 1920s. The costume designer Gregg Barnes is specific to the period in the two eras, sometimes simultaneously in the same number, and the lighting of Philip S. Rosenberg makes everything brilliant (although his triumph is the hot and smoked scene of the Nellie jazz club which ends Act Un).
The procedures, overall, are rather schizoïdes. Those who are looking for an intelligent evening, with clearly delineded themes, are likely to react with a tired “boop-boop-boop”. There is always the danger of the fatigue showstopper that sets in, as if you had eaten eight or nine matches of hot fudge in a row. But as a respite from current realities and misfortunes, and you know those I mean, Boop! could be the tonic that the doctor ordered.
Boop opened its doors on April 5, 2025 at the Broadhurst Theater. Tickets and information: Boopthemusical.com
