No expense has evidently been spared to enable Boop! to take Max Fleischer’s iconic Jazz Age flapper – complete with plucky mien, va-va-voom figure and squeaky baby voice – out of the black-and-white silent era into a splashily colorful 2025, the aim to create joy unconfined right up to the follow-the-bouncing-ball singalong finale. Marshaled by director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell, talent is everywhere you look, and decent songs are everywhere you listen.
Yet all this effort is in service of one of the most maladroit storylines Broadway has encountered in years, with cardboard characters that serve plot purposes only, a book that doesn’t listen to the lyrics and dialogue that doesn’t listen to itself. To quote the King of Siam, who had a really good libretto backing him up: Is a puzzlement.
Or maybe not so puzzling, if you sense one eye fixed on Back to the Future with its frantic peregrenations forward and backward in time, and an even more pronounced eye on Barbie. But there’s no Greta Gerwig around to modulate a thoughtful inquiry into fictional female icons’ potential as role models. Instead, librettist Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) contrives to have a reporter’s casual question instantly prompt an existential crisis in our Betty. She actually says, I’m not kidding, “I don’t know who I am anymore!,” bemoaning that men chase her around a room “with drool spilling out of their mouths.” (This from a star whose opening number brags on the agency and Woman Power in all her roles, from Western fast gun to WWI flying ace.)
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Anyway, sympathetic to her I-want-song desire to spend “An Ordinary Day,” daffy relative Grampy (Stephen DeRosa) presents a machine he’s invented to travel to another world (ours), while instantly warning her she cannot use the device he has gone out of his way to tempt her with. There could be catastrophic consequences, he warns; yet “If you went there, they wouldn’t know you from Adam,” he promises, having been there himself. Sure enough, she lands in Manhattan’s 2025 Comic-Con, where everyone knows her.
And so it goes, contradiction after contradiction, ad hoc plotting lumbering along, the rules of time- and reality-travel asserted and then violated for convenience’s sake. Very little occurs in act one, while act two is loaded with subplots dizzyingly introduced and just as quickly wrapped up. The stakes are low, even nonexistent, throughout.
But does any of that matter? If Fred Ebb was right, that no one ever pays attention to the libretto, then Boop! gets a decided edge in the face of its many plusses. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics may lack wit but they rhyme and land pleasantly, and the tunes by Grammy-winner David Foster (B’way debut) are catchy enough that one (that is, me) can easily sing along when that ball starts bouncing. Jerry Mitchell’s ability to build musical numbers to huge ovations is of course well-established after Hairspray and Kinky Boots et al., and much in evidence here, with an ensemble tireless in his service.
As for the principals, reports from the Chicago tryout that a new star was born prove accurate. Jasmine Amy Rogers is the real deal, a triple threat as actor, singer, and dancer with irresistible warmth, plus the laserlike focus of which only the best thesps can boast. It would be all too easy to kid the role with an occasional wink-wink at the audience, but Rogers respects Betty and refuses to condescend. And if the mark of a future legend is that no matter what’s going on, you can’t take your eyes off her – well, case closed.
And there’s another superstar in the making on the premises: Ainsley Melham as Betty’s significant other in the present day. Dwayne’s lifelong dream is to join the house band of a nightclub, but don’t worry about that too much, just keep an eye on Melham. Comparisons with Gene Kelly are not unapt, give the giant smile and seeming readiness to break into dance moves with every step. He’s poised to take on all the roles that fellow Aussie Hugh Jackman ages out of, and if they ever make a musical on the life of Pete Buttigieg (think of it! Pete!), Melham is a dead ringer.
The featured cast isn’t as lucky in what they’re given, but they give their all. DeRosa could use some time – and funnier quips – to establish Grampy for spectators unfamiliar with the cartoon character’s slaphappy manner (which the actor does nail perfectly). The great Faith Prince is wasted in a contrived role as Grampy’s 2005 love interest, and both are saddled with an unnecessary duet echoing “You’re Timeless to Me” from Hairspray without the jokes. There’s a quick in-and-out villain turn from Erich Bergen (Jersey Boys), but he by-golly commands the stage while he’s got it. He deserves a show built around him, as does Anastacia McCleskey, here an aide to Bergen’s corrupt mayoral candidate. She and her niece Trisha (an aggressively precocious Angelica Hale), Betty’s guides to our reality, are fine, and Phillip Huber, puppeteer for Betty’s dog Pudgy, is better still.
Rogers and Melham sashay their way through David Rockwell’s gleaming vision of Manhattan like Fred and Cyd in The Band Wagon, complemented by amusing trips back to the monochromatic 1920s. Costume designer Gregg Barnes is period-specific in both eras, sometimes simultaneously in the same number, and Philip S. Rosenberg’s lighting makes everything gleam (though his triumph is the hot, smoky Nellie’s Jazz Club scene that ends act one).
The proceedings, all in all, are rather schizoid. Those seeking a smart night out, with sharply-delineated themes, are likely to react with a weary “Boop-Boop-a-Droop.” There’s always the danger of showstopper fatigue setting in, as if you’ve eaten eight or nine hot fudge sundaes in a row. But as a respite from present-day realities and woes, and you know the ones I mean, Boop! could just be the tonic the doctor ordered.
Boop opened April 5, 2025 at the Broadhurst Theatre. Tickets and information: boopthemusical.com
