Tired parody of Broadways Golden Age is been…
Theater review
SCHMIGADOON!
Two hours and half-hour, with one intermission. At the Nederlander Theatre, 208 West forty first Street
In the early aughts, it was all the trend on Broadway for musicals to ship up other musicals.
First there was “Urinetown” and “The Drowsy Chaperone,” two nerdy parodies that have been very humorous and had tooth. In 2005, “Monty Python’s Spamalot” had David Hyde Pierce sing “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews!” And a lot later in 2015 the Renaissance-set “Something Rotten” put a Shakespearean spin on the sub-genre. After that, the musicals-about-musicals second felt finally kaput.
Well, wait a Schmig. The previously dormant pattern is energetic once again with “Schmigadoon!,” the blinding new show at the Nederlander Theatre based on the cancelled Apple TV comedy collection about a New York couple whose relationship is put to the check when they develop into trapped inside a musical.
Alex Brightman stars in “Schmigadoon!” as Josh, a man who will get trapped inside a musical. Matthew Murphy
Can’t say I missed it. Been there, ‘doon that.
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“Schmigadoon!” is nice — incessantly so — with a forged full of expert comics like Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada and Maulik Pancholy from “30 Rock.” Familiar theater faces Max Clayton and Isabelle McCalla are great, too.
Old-fangled to a fault, the show will maintain some appeal for the standard set who bristle at this season’s revivals only winding the clock back as far as 1975.
But the musical with a e book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul is confused as to what it’s supposed to be.
If it’s an ode to Golden Age classics, why does it make them appear so cloying and silly? If it’s a cutting parody of the likes of “Brigadoon,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Music Man,” “Guys and Dolls” and “The Sound of Music,” why is the tone Hallmark schmaltzy and the jokes surface-skimming, basic and unclever? Maybe on TV, mocking musicals for merely containing singing and dancing is enough to get laughs. On forty first Street, you’ve obtained to do a lot better than that.
“Schmigadoon!” sends up Golden Age classics such as “Oklahoma!,” “The Music Man,” “Carousel” and “Brigadoon.” Matthew Murphy
Yet that’s Paul’s go-to gag: “Here they go again!” He has one of the displaced main characters, Josh (Alex Brightman), whine every time he hears the pit orchestra strike up.
“Oh no! It’s a song. You just started another song!,” Josh moans before the annoying company quantity “Corn Puddin’.”
Listening to one of a large catalogue of unmemorable-but-insistent tunes that have been crammed in — an total tv season’s price of “Shipoopi”s — I used to be inclined to agree with him.
Melissa (Sara Chase) and Josh study that to escape Schmigadoon, they need to discover true love. Evan Zimmerman
Judgy Josh winds up far, far-off from the 5 boroughs with girlfriend Melissa (Sara Chase) when they stroll across a mysterious bridge in a Catskills forest that leads them to Schmigadoon, a little Land of Oz where the aesthetic is Nineties Easter egg and the lingua franca is watered-down Rodgers and Hammerstein ripoffs.
Long together but single, the couple is already on the rocks. The twee city of Schmigadoon only piles on the strain. Melissa is a Broadway buff, so she’s in heaven. Josh, however, is in a 5-6-7-Eighth circle of hell. He likes the Yankees — not “Damn Yankees.”
The alarmed pair, unable to depart, study from a mysterious leprechaun that the only method out is if they discover true love, a ok a study an important lesson. It’s as if “Groundhog Day” was made into a musical. Oh, wait…
Isabelle McCalla is touching as faculty trainer Emma. Evan Zimmerman
Chase and Brightman are dry and sarcastic, if with fairly safely written elements, and make personable guides through this Pleasantville of amped-up loons.
Funniest is “SNL” alum Gasteyer as a stern and bold reverend’s spouse named Mildred who will get the best quantity: “Tribulation,” a successful spoof of “Trouble” from “The Music Man.” And I want Afra Hines hadn’t arrived so late in Act 2 — she’s a snooty delight as Countess Gabrielle Von Blerkom, a send-up of “Sound of Music”’s frigid Baroness.
Clayton, a terrific dancer, turns Billy Bigelow from “Carousel” into dumb-hunk Danny, a carnival barker and innuendo machine who hits on Melissa.
It’s too dangerous that Harada, a phenomenally humorous actress who reprises her position from the TV collection, wasn’t given more to do as the mayor’s airheaded partner. And McKenzie Kurtz is over-caffeinated enjoying Betsy, an Ado Annie kind who comes off too trendy for this milieu — more “Shucked” than “Schmig.”
There’s a lot of hyperactivity right here, not least from director and choreographer Christopher Gattelli, who throws in fast, cardio dancing wherever he sees the smallest hole. Why such an abundance? You really feel exhausted for the ensemble. And I guarantee you there is not a single Golden Age musical with this many dance numbers. Gattelli’s best contribution, and most in the spirit of whatever this is, is a dream ballet in Act 2.
Max Clayton, a terrific dancer, performs Danny. Matthew Murphy
As the second half leaps to a close, “Schmigadoon!” shifts from a cotton sweet freight practice to a sentimentality dump truck. But the touching McCalla, as Marion-the-librarian-inspired Emma, makes the change-up work by giving one of the few performances with some mind and nuance behind it. Playing Emma’s shy youthful brother Carson at choose performances, little comic Ayaan Diop steals the show.
In the end, it seems it’s the naive townsfolk who have discovered a factor or two from Melissa and Josh — what a shock — and they unleash a bunch of facade-busting secrets and techniques. A pair guys come out of the closet for some low-cost crowd cheers and one girl owns up to being socialist.
Melissa and Josh are prepared to depart Schmigadoon. And so are we. I walked away considering if someplace buried in there is a good, hilarious musical that questions, and not so sappily, the purpose of previous musicals today.
But what’s the use of wond’rin?
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