A legendary roster of Grammy Award winners. A visionary director and a Tony Award-winning design team. One of the world's most beloved characters. Turn them loose on Broadway and what do you get? The musical The New York Times declares, "BRILLIANT!"
"Wonders pour from the stage in a ravishing stream of color and invention" (Time Out New York) as Broadway's best creative minds reimagine and bring to life the beloved Nickelodeon series with humor, heart and pure theatricality in "a party for the eyes and ears" (Daily Beast). Be there when SpongeBob and all of Bikini Bottom face catastrophe - until a most unexpected hero rises to take center stage. The New York Times hails Ethan Slater's performance as our uber-absorbent champion, "a once-in- a-lifetime match of actor and character." Get ready to explore the depths of theatrical innovation in SpongeBob SquarePants, a "Broadway Extravaganza" (The New Yorker), where the power of optimism really can save the world.
I confess I had never been drawn to linger long in Bikini Bottom, the character's underwater home. And for much of the show I was dazed by the sensory overload of Tina Landau's acid-trip production while groaning at its fusillade of cornball aquatic puns and absence of musical cohesion. But whether it wore me down like coral erosion or grew on me like algae, the show's unstinting commitment to anarchic plotting, goopy sentiment and bonkers ADHD juvenilia had me grinning like an idiot, even before I got knocked in the head with an inflated plastic orb (lawsuit pending) during the crowd-pleasing closing number.
Are you ready? The splashy new Broadway musical SpongeBob SquarePants, whose arrival was greeted in some circles with sneers of anticipatory derision, turns out to be a joy. Like its irrepressible yellow hero, played by the peppy and limber-limbed Ethan Slater, the show is unabashedly committed to imagination and dorky enthusiasm. As SpongeBob and his squirrel friend, Sandy (Lilli Cooper), labor to save their undersea town-the cheekily named Bikini Bottom-from a local volcano, the wonders of Tina Landau's production pour from the stage in a ravishing stream of color and invention that sucks you into its merry, silly currents.
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