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.
Is it too much? Nah, no such thing. While I admit that I raised an eyebrow upon learning the show's runtime-two and a half hours seemed like a whole lot of SpongeBob for a single sitting-I left realizing that I had smiled for literally every minute of it. Even at that length, it may be a shameless celebration of the short attention span (there's something new and shiny to look at pretty much every thirty seconds), but its relentless novelty has a sweet earnestness to it. Not to mention real inventiveness: It's like a kid running up to you to show you the Super Powered Extra Awesome Cybernetic Blaster Raygun she just made out of a cardboard tube and some pipe cleaners. (Indeed, Sheldon J. Plankton, SpongeBob's miniscule but nefarious antagonist, cackles over just such a contraption: the Avalanche Maker 3000's construction looks to involve a caulking gun, a camera tripod, and several buckets).
Now the grand playhouse has been transformed into a brightly festive Bikini Bottom, underwater home of that bubbly, lovable cartoon character and cultural phenomenon SpongeBob SquarePants, making his Broadway debut in a self-titled musical that's an absolute delight. Silly, heartfelt and charming, it has infectious songs written by an array of top music talent - from Aerosmith to Lady Antebellum to Cyndi Lauper - and it's been cleverly conceived and directed by the innovative Tina Landau.
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