Hayley Levitt

Ruffin’s fingerprints are all over the musical’s barrage of punchy one-liners, but much like the mayor’s ploy, it’s not enough to distract from the overall flimsiness. Everything in the writing, and in Danny Mefford’s direction, is geared toward quick laughs, which only magnifies the unattended details: sloppy lyrics with lazy rhymes, music that ignores the aural gifts of the Reagan era, and unpunctuated beats of slapstick.