SMASH
Music by Marc Shaiman
Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman
Book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice
Based on the series created by Theresa Rebeck, produced by Universal Television
directed by Susan Stroman
Imperial Theatre, New York City – until 22 June 2025
running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval
“They Just Keep Moving The Line” isn’t only the title of one of Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman’s popular numbers from Smash, the 2012 TV show about mounting a production on the Great White Way, it could equally be the modus operandi of the glossy new musical culled from it and now on Broadway. It’s a highly watchable show, attractively produced and superbly performed, but it can’t seem to decide if it’s sending up, celebrating or castigating Broadway.
THIS Smash is actually billed as ‘a comedy about a musical’ which actually turns out to be more accurate than you might assume. Until the unexpected finale, the songs are used diegetically, which effect means that as in, say, shows like Cabaret or They’re Playing Our Song, the numbers pop up in the script because the characters are show people who would be singing at this point because they’re onstage or in rehearsal. The music and lyrics aren’t integrated, they’re part of these people’s creative lives.
How much of a comedy it is depends on how funny you find Rick Elice and Bob Martin’s script, which is packed with Broadway in-jokes and references to very Manhattan-centric locations and traditions (the theatre district restaurant Orso and the Hells Kitchen bakery Schmackary’s are both name-checked, and a director goes to the opening night of a show he’s no longer working on because he’s a Tony voter). Broadway obsessives will likely love the sensation akin to being beaten around the head with copies of Playbill for a couple of hours, but others may feel bewildered.
Also, if you’re looking for real wit and credible character development you might be a little disappointed with a jaded director intoning at a moment of crisis “look on the bright side, one day we’ll all be dead” as though it were an inspired zinger. Or when a drink-loving creative proclaims he’s off to immerse himself in “two of the greatest words in the English language…alka…hol”. At best, Martin and Elice’s book is amusing, seldom flat-out hilarious, although I did enjoy Jacqueline B Arnold’s ultra-glam wonderfully world weary embattled producer referring to theatre influencers as “entitled little shits”.
Apart from a truly terrific cast of Broadway veterans, who sell the script for everything it’s worth (and then some), the principal joy of Smash on stage is the score. Almost all of these numbers were featured in the TV show (and one of them, the sassy ‘Let’s Be Bad’ even cropped up in the same songwriter’s 2022 tuner Some Like It Hot which, in all honesty, was a considerably better musical). Still, the fact that Wittman and Shaiman so shamelessly recycle their own work gives a certain piquancy to the comic scene in Smash where husband-and-wife creative team (Krysta Rodriguez and John Behlmann, both excellent) are slotting numbers from earlier shows into Bombshell, the Marilyn Monroe musical they’re working on here. The score for Smash, although ruled sadly ineligible for a Best Score nomination in this years Tonys, is a brassy, entrancing collection of songs that suggest the excitement of vintage Broadway with a tinge of pop. Paul Staroba’s large orchestra sounds glorious playing Doug Besterman’s rich orchestrations.
The voices are all pretty magnificent too, and if some of the numbers, and indeed the performances, are robbed of their full impact by some head-scratching decisions by the book writers, this will be a glorious cast album. Joshua Bergasse’s choreography is stylish and worthy of the Main Stem, and Susan Stroman’s direction keeps everything moving at a decent pace although one wonders if the few laugh-out-loud moments (usually involving Brooks Ashmanksas as the increasingly desperate director or Kristine Nielsen as a self-aggrandising, creepy acting coach costumed like Igor from Young Frankenstein) are because they’re coming from actors who are comic geniuses. Both Ashmanksas, although giving a performance similar to his joyous turn in The Prom, and Nielsen are on rampantly good form.
Robyn Hurder is a proper Broadway triple threat, a beam of light on stage, and she is as fabulous as she possibly can be here with the material she’s been given. She plays Ivy Lynn, named the same as the character Megan Hilty famously portrayed on screen, but here used quite differently plot-wise. Hurder dances up a storm, has a world class belt and exudes star quality but feels hemmed-in by a weird plot strand where she goes all ‘Method’ while portraying Marilyn and becomes impossible to work with. The writing just isn’t sharp or clear enough to make this plausible. Sometimes, under Nielsen’s beady eye, she thinks she IS Marilyn, at other moments she has attacks of conscience. It gets confusing, and ultimately pointless, to try and work out which is which.
Bella Coppola as the associate director who nearly ends up starring in the show suffers similarly from an unbelievable story arc and undistinguished writing, but nearly rips the roof off the theatre with her ‘Let Me Be Your Star’ act one finale. Caroline Bowman as Karen, here a benign understudy rather than an ambitious rival to Ivy, fares better, and delivers the aforementioned ‘They Just Keep Moving The Line’ stunningly. The split focus between three female leads makes it hard to truly empathise with any of them. Elsewhere, the book and direction can’t seem to decide if they’re going for zany or heartfelt (and you can have both, as Stroman’s own original staging of The Producers demonstrated). The show also attempts to make light of one of the characters drinking problem and of Marilyn’s suicide, which feels a little misguided.
Beowulf Boritt’s scenic designs are colourful and efficient, occasionally ey-popping, and Alejo Vietti’s costumes are often gorgeous. Ken Billington bathes the whole thing in mood-changing, gleaming lights. If the ensemble looks like it could use a few more members, they work their socks off.
Will Smash be a smash? I honestly have no idea. It may just be too self-referential to appeal to people who don’t live and breathe Broadway. But it’s big, bold and reasonably spectacular. Ashmanksas is probably worth the price of a ticket all by himself though. A decent night out, if not a truly memorable one.
ajhlovestheatre 
Leave a comment