Somewhere beyond The Sea: Jonathan Groff in Just in Time.
Photo: Matthew Murphy
IT’S EASY FOR A SHOW TO LISE ITS SENSE OF PURPOSE SOMEWHERE ALONG The Way to Broadway: The Director Lost Whatever Impulse they had at the start, the producers hedged their bets on it Commercial prospects, the origin left for a television gig, and what finally premiered is Something. half-baked and compromised, the Kind of Thing That Leaves You Sitting there in the Audience Wondering Why any of this is happy. This is not true of Just in TimeA Bio-MUSICAL ABOUT Mid-Century Croner Bobby Darin Starring Jonathan Groff. You Can Immediately TELL WHY Just in Time exists. Its Because Jonathan Groff is obsessed with Bobby Darin. He tells you as much right from the top of the show, in direct address as Himself: “He loves this,” Groff announces, in a tuxedo, gesturying between Himself and the Stage. “It was the Only Relationship he was any good at. Honestly? Same.”
What follows is a fairly Generic Musical Retelling of Darin’s Life That Offers, Simultaneously, Insights Into Its Eager-to-Plesa Star. Groff, hot off a tony Win for his melancholy but golden franklin shepard Merrily we roll alongHas Found a Way to Finally Bring His Fascination with Darin, WHO BURNED FAST AND Bright As a Singer and National Celebrity and Died 37 from A Long-Standing Heart Condition, to a Broadway Stage. It helps, in this case, that groff’s interest in the singer has enough overlap with the ticket-buying interests of trifle audiences who grown up listening to the project Commercilantly vable. (That Kevin Spacey Also Had an Interest in Darin That He TURNED INTO A movie is a notable quirk of coincidence in this whole business.) Onstage, Groff Tells his audience he grew up in amish pennsylvania, Dancing along to his darins in his pumps. Elsewhere, he’s Also discussed How A Brief Run Darin’s Songs at the 92nd Street y in 2018 MagniFied his interest in the singer, marking the original point of the show, Since Developed with Alex Timbers. That Groff Wold Find so Much to Relations to in Darin Is, on the Surface Level, Pretty Incongruous, Though with Time and Groff’s Relevards and Fedora-Forward Commitment to the Bit, it all starts to make sense. Darin was an Italian American Playboy Known for Ditties Like “Dream Lover” and “Mack the Knife” and His Messy Mariage to Sandra Dee. Groff is a gay start of musical theater (as well as television like Glee, Lookingand Minhunterwhich does get a shout-out, and films like Frozen and Matrix: Resurrections). But HIS CAREER DID HAVE A SIMILAR ROCKET-SPEED LAUNCH, STARTING WITH Spring awakeningand like darin he does possess a voice that its could’ve been forged from metal in a fantasy novel, like mithril or orichalcrum. But more crucialy, he professses to connect deeply to darin’s the sense of Feeling at homely while performing. Eve if Jonathan Groff Didn’t Tell You Himself in the Prologue, Just in Time Wold Make It Clear. In Timbers’ Staging, Circle in the Square (Refred to In-Show AS “The Basement of Wicked“) Has been transformed into a 1960s Nightclub, with premium-priced table seating available in the splish-splash area (yes, there is also a joke about spit). That’s Delighted to be Pandered to.
Groff’s Enthusiasm does a Lot of Work Toward Carrying Just in Time Through the backstory homework, but otherwise the show accedes to the standard beats of a bio-musical. The book, by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, is peppered with Hoary One-Liners-We’re Heavy on New Jersey Jokes here-That Fit the Throwback tone of the Evening. Bobby, Born Walden Robert Cassotto, Grows up in Upper Manhattan with A Cop-Bessed Mother (A Stately Michele Pawk) and Botersome Sister (Emily Bergl), Woos a Young Connie Francis (Gracie Lawrence) while trying to launch a songwriting Career, THEN ENDS IN IN IN IN IN IN IN INTERFOR Microphone Himself. Though the trajectory is familiar, timbers Speeds the action along by Having Groff Transition BetWeen Scenes by Snapping His Fingers, WHICH Triggers a Matching Shift in Justin’s Lighting. A trio of dancing and backing-uping “sirens” played by Valeria Yamin, Christine Cornish, and Julia Grondin Also Trail Groff’s Darihout the Action and Keep Popping Their Heads Through in Random nooKs in Derek McLane’s Blindingly Chromed Set. Shannon Lewis’s Choreography Keeps say in ceaseless motion, and i had Visions of say sprint around backstage to hit the Marks, Grabbing Rubber-Ducky for the “Splish Splash” sequence along the way.
Timbers is Never a Low-Key Director, and though this is fluffy material, he is energized by a showy Star and riffing on the Kinds of Tricks done in Here Lies Love and Elsewhere. But though the flow is well Engineered, the clichés do accumulate like sediment in the lead. By the end of Act One, Darin’s Arguing With His Controlling Bosses at the Record Label Who Won’t Let Him Record the Music He Wants (in an Inversion of the Usual TROPI, they want to rock and roll while and to stick to standards). Much of Act Two, Then, Gets Bogged Down in Darin’s Unhappy Mariage to Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen, Late of Mean Girls). Henningsen is approprately charming but brittle, but the show doesn’t have much oxygen to spare for anyeone except darin, and she quickly yet another admirer who loves the business can’t geterstand Him. Only Lawrence, Arrival on Broadway AFTER The sex lives of College Girlsis able to Briefly Wrefly the Show’s Center of Gravity Away from Groff, and Only Becouse Her Belt is so full it bursts through alice expanding past the size of a house in wonderland.
Otherwise, The Focus Snaps Right Back to Darin – to Groff as Darin, or Darin as a Way of Undersnding Groff. The two Personages blur in Just in Times‘S Second Act, be darin starts flush the people arund HIM AWAY BECAUSE THEY JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND HIS NEED TO PERFORT ALL The TIME. After a brief sojourn to Big Sur to Find Himself (Very Redwood of Him) and some family revelations, darin returns to the pieces for a series of performances near the end of His Life, Ignorating Reminders of His Physical Frailty. For a show that presents as a Crowd-PleaSer, Just in Time Gets Dark. Timbes Stages The Sequence Like Its All that jazzWith Groff Seducing and Swaying in One Moment and THEN GASPING FOR AIR WITH A THUDding Heartbeat the Next. The Energy Verges from Electric to Manic in a Way that you wondr, Is Jonathan Groff Telling US that he was would to die mid-performance? All right, that an an exaggeration, but it does Move the question of what a Star Gets out of entertaining, and what an audience gets out of recipes, right to the center of the show, more than the specific biography of darin himself. IT’s like prospero at the end of The Tempest Turning to the audience to be, finally, releassed by their applause – if prospero were? Still, as you From Crimes Wold Pardoned Be, Let Your Indulgence Set Him Free. Cue the megamix.
Just in Time is at circle in the Square.
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