BWW Reviews: Benanti, Hough and Wolpe Tour the City in Radio City Music Hall's NEW YORK SPRING SPECTACULAR

Back in the day, Broadway musicals like A Trip To Chinatown, Greenwich Village Follies and numerous Harlem-set revues offered mid-town theatregoers a bit of a guided tour through outer reaches of Manhattan.

The spirit of those shows is alive and kicking in Radio City Music Hall's New York Spring Spectacular, where director/choreographer Warren Carlyle uses bookwriter Joshua Harmon's light narrative as an excuse to recreate on stage some of New York's great attractions, most of them serving as inspiration for the legendary Rockettes to make an appearance.

Broadway fans will be happy to see Laura Benanti starring in a new musical, playing a smart, fast-quipping and ultimately romantic contemporary urban woman, Jenna, with big dreams of turning a newly-purchased New York guided tour company into a high-tech virtual experience. That would mean forcing its charming tour guide Bernie (loveable Broadway character man Lenny Wolpe) into retirement and replacing him with a hologram image.

Fortunately, a handsome, charismatic angel, Jack (Derek Hough from Dancing With The Stars), has been sent down to earth by God (the voice of Whoopi Goldberg) on a mission to earn his wings by convincing Jenna that nothing beats the live experience offered by Bernie.

So Jenna, along with her assistant Marshall (Jared Grimes), agrees to take Bernie's tour before reaching a final decision. Of course, the irony of it all is that the live tour the audience watches is actually a high-tech recreation of the real thing, but let that pass.

Starting from Grand Central Station, the delightful showcase first takes us to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Degas ballerinas perform to Benanti's lovely soprano solo of "I Could Have Danced All Night," and then to Central Park's Alice in Wonderland statue (voiced by Bella Thorne) before a sudden shower cues Hough, Grimes and the Rockettes to grab their umbrellas for a bit of "Singin' in the Rain."

Stops at a few of the city's sports facilities (and one of Jersey's) has the Rockettes dancing as Knicks, Rangers, Giants and Yankees and a celebration of Fashion Week has them donning LED jackets, each made up of 152 lights.

The voices of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler banter about as the New York Public Library's lions, Lady Liberty makes an appearance, of course, and filmed cameos by local celebs like Donald Trump, Diane Von Furstenberg and Mariano Rivera frequently dot the proceedings. Glasses are provided for a 3-D sequence and so are wrist bands that light up in colors whenever Jack performs his angelic magic.

And while the evening is by no means high art, it does entertain and achieves a certain sweetness in its affection for the city. Certainly the romance of the evening skyline is captured when Hough and Benanti ballroom dance to "The Way You Look Tonight" atop the Empire State Building and when Wolpe recalls the night he proposed to his now-deceased wife on the observation deck and imagines a reunion.

If anything, New York Spring Spectacular encourages viewers to get out there and explore this hellava town, where you can find something pretty spectacular in every neighborhood.

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