Guess what, Huey Lewis and the News wild ones! The heart of rock and roll is still beating. Even louder right now. That throbbing heart is beating on Broadway where a crop of the beloved band’s songs is being given a bouncing treatment in an entertainment dubbed — what else? — The Heart of Rock and Roll.
This nice surprise is what’s known as a jukebox musical, a by-now-established category into which any rocker or folksinger’s songbook is fair game for staging, too often not that successfully. But then again, didn’t Irving Berlin see to it his list of hits became hit box-office flicks like Easter Parade and White Christmas?
So, give a round of applause to Jonathan A. Abrams, who (from a story by producer Tyler Mitchell and himself) dreamed up a plot in which to lodge the Huey Lewis and the News songs so’s a talented gaggle of singers and dancers can give Great White Way life to them. For added stage heat, choreographer Lorin Latarro grabs every opportunity for her multi-talented troupe to maximize the excitement with inexhaustible energy.
For sure, Abrams isn’t breaking any ground with his light and lively tale. There’s not a minute’s pretense in it, a charge that can be held against too many recent offerings. Thank the Gods of Music for that.
Bobby (Cory Cott), an ambitious fellow, is the singer for a band but earns his keep toiling at an established box-manufacturing company where he hopes to become top salesman. Torn between music and salesmanship, he gets in trouble splitting his time. Leaving his four-man group to prosper (or not) as a three-man group (F. Michael Haynie, Raymond J. Lee, John-Michael Lyles), he meets trouble irritating Stone-Box-boss Stone (John Dossett).
Ignoring advice from company chum Paige (Zoe Jensen) and dating pals Roz (Tamika Lawrence) and Wyatt (Josh Breckenridge), Bobby is further caught in his internal tug-of-war. An increasing distraction is Stone’s appealing but not sufficiently confident daughter Cassandra (McKenzie Kurtz), who’s being wooed by monied, sold-on-himself Princeton grad Tucker (Billy Harrigan Tighe).
Perhaps there’s no need to go on about the storyline’s pushes and pulls. Along the way to the finale, which gives optimum power to “The Power of Love,” there’s not much worry over how things will end. That eventuates when Bobby must decide to honor the contract he signed with Stone Box or the one he signed with Chrysalis Records.
There is an act-two sequence, however, where Bobby talks about a difficult and regretful relationship with his father. It takes only a few minutes but successfully deepens the musical’s mood while not at all jarring what’s come before or what follows. Bookwriter Abrams deserves favorable comment on that.
Also deserving credit for his sensitivity is Cott as he plays Bobby’s reflective moment. Looking for much of the show as if he’s just come from pressing weights, Cott dispenses not only rock’n’roll grit but leavens it with an unpushed charm matched by the entire cast, especially Kurtz, Dossett, Jensen, Lawrence, Breckenridge, and even Tighe at Tucker’s worst moments.
Choreographer Latarro — only just finished with her hunky-dory work on The Who’s Tommy work — opens the second act with a demanding work-out routine. Not that all her routines don’t demand her dancers to expend their utmost. There’s one that even has the terpers joyfully stomping on bubble wrap. Talk about inspiration.
In addition to “The Power of Love,” what other Huey Lewis and the News Top 40ers are on hand (and foot)? Too many to list here, but the title tune, naturally, and likely any others a die-hard fan would want to hear, all lovingly attacked by conductor Will Van Dyke and a bubbly (bubble-gummy?) rock band.
Without any of the other members of the creative team giving the impression they’re attempting to knock off the audience’s socks, set designer Derek McLane, lighting designer Japhy Weideman, sound designer John Shivers, and costume designer Jen Caprio come through like loyal pals.
A note to costumer Caprio: Princeton’s colors are orange and black. No Princeton blazer would be orange and blue, as they are here. The heart of any gung-ho Princeton man or woman (aren’t they all gung-ho?) confronted with an orange and blue blazer might instantly stop beating.
