JOY: A New True Musical Off-Broadway Reviews

Wolfe gives her all throughout and sells “A Better Way,” the de rigueur 11 o’clock empowerment anthem, as effectively the real Joy pitched her product. But what does it say about the show that a mop giveaway to some audience members provides one of the biggest flashes of excitement?

“Joy: A New True Musical” lies somewhere between the movie and book in tone, but it has a quirkiness all its own, in part because, well, it’s fifteen musical numbers about a woman who sold a mop, but mostly because it exists in an art form that tends to skewer business people. (The exception: show business people.)

Unfortunately, the show isn’t just one act but rather two, its second half completely squandering its theatrical momentum with a descent into narrative hokiness. Despite a terrific performance by Betsy Wolfe in the title role, the awkwardly titled Joy: A New True Musical needs some serious mopping up.

The film, I remember at least diving into the corporate chicanery employed to cheat Mangano out of her due profits, and it briefly peeks out in the second act of Ken Davenport’s book for the musical. But neither it, nor AnnMarie Milazzo’s music and lyrics, wring much more from those ideas, which might have lent the story the specificity needed to justify itself. Instead it takes a generic, “er, adulting, right?” derp that flattens everything out for the sake of relatable bonhomie.

Tony Award nominee Betsy Wolfe is superb as the headstrong Joy, commanding the stage whether she’s mopping up a spill or soaring through a power ballad. In “A Better Way,” a pivotal number where Joy fights for the patent to her invention, Wolfe brings down the house, earning a mid-show ovation at my performance.

Good storytelling is not only key to selling merchandise, it’s essential to musical theater. And while the production at the Laura Pels Theatre has much to offer – most especially a bravura star turn from Betsy Wolfe – the book by Ken Davenport falls rather short in selling Joy’s rags-to-riches story on the live stage.