• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
October 3, 2024 10:00 pm

Safety Not Guaranteed: Nor Is a Satisfying Time

By Michael Sommers

★★☆☆☆ An intriguing-sounding sci-fi musical romance, disappointingly realized

Taylor Trensch and Nkeki Obi-Melekwe in Safety Not Guaranteed. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

The possibility of time travel is the tantalizing element that fuels Safety Not Guaranteed, a new musical fashioned from a same-named 2012 indie film. Opening in its world premiere on Thursday at the BAM Harvey Theater, the musical promises to whisk its characters — and presumably the audience — into amazing times, but ultimately Safety Not Guaranteed goes nowhere wonderful.

Adapted from Derek Connolly’s screenplay by Nick Blaemire (Glory Days) and merged more or less with songs by Ryan Miller, who provided the soundtrack for the film (which this reviewer has never seen), the musical is set nowadays in the Pacific Northwest. A fledgling journalist, Darius (Nkeki Obi-Melekwe) spots a peculiar classified ad seeking a partner for time travel and she lands a magazine gig to nose out the news. Joining Darius for the trip to a seaside village on the assignment as her assistant is Arnau (Rohan Kymal), a nice if nerdy gamer, and their editor Jeff (Pomme Koch), a dude in his disillusioned later 30s who hopes to get in touch with his younger self and possibly an old flame.

Indeed, as the subplots proceed, Jeff hooks up not altogether blissfully with his former girlfriend Liz (Ashley Pérez Flanagan), while Arnau is unexpectedly wooed amid the book stacks by Tristan (John-Michael Lyles), a perky librarian. Meanwhile back at the main story, following several bungled attempts to make contact, Darius manages to finally encounter Kenneth (Taylor Trensch), the placer of the classified ad who appears merely to be an oddball clerk in a grocery store.

Or might this paranoid little fellow really own a working time machine? Darius finds herself intrigued. Whether the audience feels likewise is debatable.

A surprisingly dull event, Safety Not Guaranteed turns out to be a disappointing realization of an intriguing premise for a sci-fi musical romance. The director, Lee Sunday Evans, who has neatly handled quirky musicals such as In the Green and Riddle of the Trilobites in the past, can do little with this unimaginative effort that lacks wonder and magic and above all, a sense of adventure. Few laughs and even fewer thrills arise in Blaemire’s increasingly doleful script during which Kenneth and Darius reveal their not entirely believable sad reasons for going back a dozen years in time.

Miller’s grungy score presents a bunch of alt-rock songs usually driven hard by repetitive lyrics, metallic basslines and heavy percussion that scarcely illuminate the characters or their emotions. An exception is “Are You Good?” a pleasantly easygoing, old-fashioned musical theater number shared by the two secondary couples. Creative and extensive underscoring possibly would help to heighten the story, especially in fostering a mysterious atmosphere and bolstering the musical’s so-what ending.

The unprepossessing climactic special effect at the show’s abrupt conclusion likely would make illusionist David Copperfield giggle. The sparse settings designed by Krit Robinson and the occasionally harsh lighting by Reza Behjat insufficiently fill out the Harvey space with the cool sci-fi atmospherics necessary to support the improbable storyline. Evans’ staging suffers from an inconsistency of tone during the show’s nearly two hour span; its moods veering from serious to cartoony to the simply hapless, as when the furtive character of Kenneth runs mad circles around the stage or when he and Darius engage in an extended, supposedly humorous, martial arts training session.

The performers sing and act credibly enough, but Safety Not Guaranteed proves a waste of their talents as much as it’s mostly a waste of the audience’s time.

Safety Not Guaranteed opened October 3, 2024, at the BAM Harvey Theater and runs through October 20. Tickets and information: bam.org

About Michael Sommers

Michael Sommers has written about the New York and regional theater scenes since 1981. He served two terms as president of the New York Drama Critics Circle and was the longtime chief reviewer for The Star-Ledger and the Newhouse News Service. For an archive of Village Voice reviews, go here. Email: michael@nystagereview.com.

Primary Sidebar

Creditors: Strindberg Updated, For Better and Worse

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff, and Justice Smith star in Jen Silverman's adaptation of Strindberg's classic drama.

Creditors: Love, Marriage, and Maddening Mind Games

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★☆☆ Ian Rickson directs the rarely performed Strindberg work, with a refresh from playwright Jen Silverman

Goddess: A Myth-Making, Magical New Musical

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ A luminous Amber Iman casts a spell in an ambitious Kenya-set show at the Public Theater

Lights Out, Nat King Cole: Smile When Your Heart Is Breaking

By Frank Scheck

★★★☆☆ Dule Hill plays the title role in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor's play with music, exploring Nat King Cole's troubled psyche.

CRITICS' PICKS

Dead Outlaw: Rip-Roarin’ Musical Hits the Bull’s-Eye

★★★★★ David Yazbek’s brashly macabre tuner features Andrew Durand as a real-life desperado, wanted dead and alive

Just in Time Christine Jonathan Julia

Just in Time: Hello, Bobby! Darin Gets a Splashy Broadway Tribute

★★★★☆ Jonathan Groff gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Grammy-winning “Beyond the Sea” singer

John Proctor Is the Villain cast

John Proctor Is the Villain: A Fearless Gen Z Look at ‘The Crucible’

★★★★★ Director Danya Taymor and a dynamite cast bring Kimberly Belflower’s marvelous new play to Broadway

Good Night, and Good Luck: George Clooney Makes Startling Broadway Bow

★★★★★ Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their 2005 film to reflect not only the Joe McCarthy era but today

The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Masterpiece from Page to Stage

★★★★★ Succession’s Sarah Snook is brilliant as everyone in a wild adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s prophetic novel

Operation Mincemeat: A Comical Slice of World War II Lore

★★★★☆ A screwball musical from London rolls onto Broadway

Sign up for new reviews

Copyright © 2025 • New York Stage Review • All Rights Reserved.

Website Built by Digital Culture NYC.