In the early aughts, it was all the rage on Broadway for musicals to send up other musicals.
First there was “Urinetown” and “The Drowsy Chaperone,” two nerdy parodies that were very funny and had teeth. In 2005, “Monty Python’s Spamalot” had David Hyde Pierce sing “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews!” And much later in 2015 the Renaissance-set “Something Rotten” put a Shakespearean spin on the sub-genre. After that, the musicals-about-musicals moment felt finally kaput.
Well, wait a Schmig. The formerly dormant trend is active once again with “Schmigadoon!,” the blinding new show at the Nederlander Theatre based on the cancelled Apple TV comedy series about a New York couple whose relationship is put to the test when they become trapped inside a musical.
Can’t say I missed it. Been there, ‘doon that.
“Schmigadoon!” is pleasant — incessantly so — with a cast full of skilled comics like Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada and Maulik Pancholy from “30 Rock.” Familiar theater faces Max Clayton and Isabelle McCalla are wonderful, too.
Old-fangled to a fault, the show will hold some appeal for the traditional set who bristle at this season’s revivals only winding the clock back as far as 1975.
But the musical with a book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul is confused as to what it’s supposed to be.
If it’s an ode to Golden Age classics, why does it make them seem so cloying and stupid? If it’s a cutting parody of the likes of “Brigadoon,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Music Man,” “Guys and Dolls” and “The Sound of Music,” why is the tone Hallmark schmaltzy and the jokes surface-skimming, basic and unclever? Maybe on TV, mocking musicals for merely containing singing and dancing is enough to get laughs. On 41st Street, you’ve got to do a lot better than that.
Yet that’s Paul’s go-to gag: “Here they go again!” He has one of the displaced main characters, Josh (Alex Brightman), whine every time he hears the pit orchestra strike up.
“Oh no! It’s a song. You just started another song!,” Josh moans before the annoying company number “Corn Puddin’.”
Listening to one of a huge catalogue of unmemorable-but-insistent tunes that have been crammed in — an entire television season’s worth of “Shipoopi”s — I was inclined to agree with him.
Long together but unmarried, the couple is already on the rocks. The twee town of Schmigadoon only piles on the tension. Melissa is a Broadway buff, so she’s in heaven. Josh, however, is in a 5-6-7-8th circle of hell. He likes the Yankees — not “Damn Yankees.”
The alarmed pair, unable to leave, learn from a mysterious leprechaun that the only way out is if they find true love, a k a learn an important lesson. It’s as if “Groundhog Day” was made into a musical. Oh, wait…
Chase and Brightman are dry and sarcastic, if with rather safely written parts, and make personable guides through this Pleasantville of amped-up loons.
Funniest is “SNL” alum Gasteyer as a stern and ambitious reverend’s wife named Mildred who gets the best number: “Tribulation,” a winning spoof of “Trouble” from “The Music Man.” And I wish Afra Hines hadn’t arrived so late in Act 2 — she’s a snooty delight as Countess Gabrielle Von Blerkom, a send-up of “Sound of Music”’s frigid Baroness.
Clayton, a terrific dancer, turns Billy Bigelow from “Carousel” into dumb-hunk Danny, a carnival barker and innuendo machine who hits on Melissa.
It’s too bad that Harada, a phenomenally funny actress who reprises her role from the TV series, wasn’t given more to do as the mayor’s airheaded spouse. And McKenzie Kurtz is over-caffeinated playing Betsy, an Ado Annie type who comes off too modern for this milieu — more “Shucked” than “Schmig.”
There’s a lot of hyperactivity here, not least from director and choreographer Christopher Gattelli, who throws in fast, aerobic dancing wherever he sees the smallest gap. Why such an abundance? You feel exhausted for the ensemble. And I guarantee you there is not a single Golden Age musical with this many dance numbers. Gattelli’s best contribution, and most in the spirit of whatever this is, is a dream ballet in Act 2.
As the second half leaps to a close, “Schmigadoon!” shifts from a cotton candy freight train to a sentimentality dump truck. But the touching McCalla, as Marion-the-librarian-inspired Emma, makes the change-up work by giving one of the few performances with some intellect and nuance behind it. Playing Emma’s shy younger brother Carson at select performances, little comedian Ayaan Diop steals the show.
In the end, it turns out it’s the naive townsfolk who have learned a thing or two from Melissa and Josh — what a shock — and they unleash a bunch of facade-busting secrets. A couple guys come out of the closet for some cheap crowd cheers and one woman owns up to being socialist.
Melissa and Josh are ready to leave Schmigadoon. And so are we. I walked away contemplating if somewhere buried in there is a smart, hilarious musical that questions, and not so sappily, the point of old musicals today.
But what’s the use of wond’rin?
