Jackson McHenry

Friedman’s straightforward and finely polished version, however ramshackle certain aspects of the show remain, gives Merrily new emotional depth, especially in its rendering of Frank. You feel powerfully his ache to get back to the past, which is quite an accomplishment—the guy does have some sweet digs in Bel Air.

That’s the trick that director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw (he of the tap-dancing Elders in The Book of Mormon and the tap-dancing teens in Mean Girls) has mastered in the stage musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot. He’s fitted the show together so tightly it’s nearly vacuum-sealed. The production is relentlessly technically dazzling: Scene flows into song flows into scene flows into key change flows into dramatic set change flows into inevitable comedic tap-dance sequence flows into key change and on and on. By the end of it, all I could think is, Well, this is most of the way to being an incredible musical. It just needs to, you know, make you feel anything more than abstract admiration.

The element of McCarten’s book that makes it stand out, slightly, from the typical fare is … therapy. The whole experience is framed by conversations between an older Neil (Mark Jacoby) and his psychologist (Linda Powell), who is pressuring him to open up by way of analyzing the lyrics to his own songs. Jacoby and Powell sit in armchairs on either side of the stage, and occasionally stay there during the flashbacks to young Neil (Will Swenson) performing, in a Drowsy Chaperone sort of arrangement. There’s poignancy to seeing a cloistered, depressive man like Diamond try to articulate how metaphorical storm clouds descend upon him whenever he’s not onstage, leading him to sabotage his personal life. But because the focus here is really on the hits, there’s only so deep these analyses can go. After that “Forever in Blue Jeans” sequence, Diamond’s shrink interjects, “So. Wonderful wife. Great kids. Raining money. World tours.” What did that lead to? Well, Neil responds, “more sequins,” and then we segue into “Soolaimon.”

It’s a delight to have Jordan E. Cooper kick down the door of Broadway in heels and storm onstage with something as raucous as Ain’t No Mo’. The show’s whirligig satire seems to gain momentum by sending up its very environs, a series of sketches built around a recurring conceit wherein Cooper, in drag as a flight attendant named Peaches, desperately tries to coordinate the onboarding for a government-funded flight taking Black Americans back to Africa. It’s a show that’s bawdy and bold and uninterested in seeming respectable, but it’s also fascinated by respectability, the question of who might leave or stay on that flight, who might embrace their Blackness and who might try to bury it. Cooper sees you there in the audience thinking he might’ve buttoned up his ideas for the Belasco Theatre, and he cackles in defiance.

There’s a lot in the musical KPOP that makes for a successful show, including a winning ensemble, melodies that sneak into your ears and stay there, and rhythm-perfect choreography. But it has a curious inertia. It lacks drama. Not in the sense of tension between its characters—there’s plenty of bickering to observe between the characters at the musical’s fictional K-pop label as they prepare for a big American showcase—but in the sense of a thrust, an arc, propulsion. It feels as if the show has rushed out into the open water of Broadway and then gotten stuck, like a ship unable to catch the wind.

If you were to adapt the feeling of getting day-drunk on cheap rosé for the stage, you'd get & Juliet. The aggressively effervescent musical has come to Broadway, & it intends to wash you away in the blushy delights of pop feminism & hit singles & middle-school-level Shakespeare jokes. At times, such as when someone belts the chorus of 'Since U Been Gone' at you, it is impossible not to feel intoxicated. & at others, such as when any character tries to explain any part of this show's plot, you may feel as if the world has started to spin desperately out of control. You may shout 'Woo!' & you may feel queasy. You'll have that ephemeral thrill of being alive on a dance floor & end up with a hangover.

In the Broadway run, that sun shines brighter and clearer- the show-choir costumes are shinier, Danny Mefford's choreography has more room for ice-skating action, and set designer David Zinn has even deployed a revolve, though, delightfully, it's used only to turn a dinner table. You miss the closeness to the actors, since director Jessica Stone has done such lovely work in getting the cast to capture the micro-grimaces of high-school awkwardness, but the essential delicacy of the show is intact.

To that end, the musical scrupulously duplicates the movie, delivering nearly every famous line of dialogue right where you expect it, whether shouted ('Don't take drugs!'), sung ('It's all happening'), or yelled out in the middle of a song ('I am a golden god!'). It so desperately wants to remind you of something else you might've loved that the presiding emotional affect ends up being melancholy. We've missed the tour bus twice over. This is almost Almost Famous.

When Feldstein opened the show, she could not handle the songs, and as Helen Shaw pointed out, the 'songs are the whole caboodle.' In Michele's case, this works to her advantage. The way that the show's written, Fanny's voice is the metonym for her stardom, so as long as you really believe she's got the magic, you don't necessarily need to buy her comedic skills, or really any other aspect of her character. It's like in Shakespeare, where the weather clears up when the right king is on the throne. Michele is not a natural comedian, but she finds a way to be charming with Fanny's jokes, which are as broad as the East River, just by trying so very hard to sell every one. It's like she's hoping her Sketch Comedy 101 teacher will give her a gold star.

It's becoming hard to leave a big musical without having something rain down on you, whether confetti (Moulin Rouge!, Beetlejuice), streamers (Little Shop of Horrors), or fake snow (Frozen). To that messy trend, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical is here to add rolls and rolls of toilet paper, shot over the audience's head with leaf blowers when its young hero summons streams of water to fight one of his mythical enemies. The young fans at my performance cheered like the ball was being dropped on New Year's Eve.