Insert Your Own Pun on "Boop" and Either "Poop" or "Oops" Here
The Intelligent Showmosexual's Guide to Theatergoing and Ticket-buying With a Key to the Pictures
*Want to hear the author read an edited version of this substack? Scroll down for a link to audio!
Despite its producers presumably banking on mass adulation of their source IP, and its writers having constructed a story hinging on that supposed fascination, I'd bet most audiences going to see Boop! The Musical arrive at the theater with the same minimal exposure to its title character that I had. Certainly, I could identify her by sight and I knew her "Boop-Oop-a-Doop" catchphrase, but if I'd ever seen any of her animated shorts, they were long forgotten. (To be honest, I didn't even remember that she makes a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, despite having been a child of the 80s who did a great imitation of Roger's "Pwwwwwwease, Eddie!" in public…and an even better imitation of Jessica's "I'm not bad; I'm just drawn that way" in private.) The only special knowledge of Betty Boop that I possessed, and I suspect most of my fellow audience members lacked, was that her voice was based in large part on singer Helen Kane's.
It was through my early and mega fandom of Cyndi Lauper (like I said, child of the 80s) that I first discovered Kane. She delivered the original rendition of "He's So Unusual," which Lauper covered and took titular inspiration from on her debut album She's So Unusual. I took a liking to Kane's vocals and, in the early days of music downloads, when other teenagers were giving their family computers viruses grabbing tracks by NSYNC and Destiny's Child off of Napster, I took advantage of the vast library to familiarize myself with her catalogue beyond her greatest hit, "I Want To Be Loved by You," from which listeners can certainly draw a direct line to Betty Boop. One of my favorite recordings became "You're the Cream in My Coffee," which was actually recorded by Annette Hanshaw and misattributed to Kane. Who would've thought the reliable authority of Napster could get something wrong? Regardless, I found myself thinking of the song as I watched Boop! the Musical—at first because of the inextricable link between Kane and Betty; then, as the show continued, as a sort of backwards analogy for the musical itself.
Readers familiar with my voice may now guess I'm going to say Boop! is like a cup of coffee where someone has forgotten the cream, but they'd be wrong. Boop! is like a cup of coffee where someone has added plenty of cream, an ample dose of sugar, and maybe even a couple of pumps of that good Torani flavored syrup…but forgotten the actual coffee. In other words, Boop! includes all sorts of lovely enhancements, but what they're supposed to elevate is woefully absent.
The action starts with a live montage of Betty Boop shorts. We see Betty (Jasmine Amy Rogers) assume a variety of roles, chase off lustful predators, and sing and dance. Taking a cue from City of Angels, David Rockwell's clever sets and Gregg Barnes's brilliant costumes situate us in the black-and-white world of her films. A director yells cut and, though the cinematic hijinks stop, we remain in Betty's parallel universe where she is an adored starlet. A reporter soon asks her, "Who are you really?", triggering an identity crisis faster than you can say (and, unfortunately, faster than lyricist Susan Birkenhead could write) "I want song." With the help of crazy old Maurice her inventor Grampy (Stephen DeRosa), she is soon transported to the real world so she can figure out who she truly is without the pressures of being a celebrity. As theoretical hilarity would have it, she ends up landing at Comic Con in contemporary New York City where she is assumed to be a Boop cosplayer; experiences something like love at first sight with Sensitive Jazz Musician Dwayne (Ainsley Melham), who appears to be cosplaying himself as Sexy Pete Buttigieg; and quickly befriended by Precocious-but-Wounded Teen and Boop Super Fan Trisha (Angelica Hale) whose surrogate mother Carol (Anastacia McCleskey) is running a floundering mayoral campaign for Sleazy Politician Raymond Demarest (Erich Bergen). Meanwhile, in her absence, Betty's cartoon universe is falling apart, which sends Grampy and his adorable marionette dog Pudgy on a quest to bring her back, for which he enlists the help of his long-lost love, astrophysicist Valentina (Faith Prince).
If that sounds like an awful lot, it is. One of the remarkable aspects of Bob Martin's book for Boop! is how much goes on without anything new, surprising, or significant going on at all. It's as if the writers thought they could compensate for their lack of a point or artistic purpose by adding more—more characters! more plot machinations! more of David Foster's gobsmackingly nondescript music!—but the end result is chaos rather than comedy or complexity. And I haven't even mentioned the most farfetched element of the story: the notion that New Yorkers actually hang out on the "red steps" in Times Square.
Without an effective score or script, Boop! feels like drinking a cup of coffee that’s missing the coffee. You've shown up to consume something that just isn't there. But, hot damn!, director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell has assembled some spectacular talent who offer you cream and sugar and scones and jam to try to make up for it.
First and foremost is Rogers, whose dazzling performance is somehow her Broadway debut. She rises to each of the many demands the production makes of her so exquisitely, Rogers emerges as a bona fide triple threat more than perhaps anyone since Sutton Foster's breakthrough in Thoroughly Modern Millie. (The flapper fashion further accentuates the comparison.) Her playfulness makes the corniest bits more endearing; her warmth makes the most maudlin dialogue more believable; her powerhouse voice, effortlessly alternating from bright and pingy Broadway belt to jazzy sultriness, makes the most generic music more interesting. It will be very exciting to see the heights she can reach when she's not scaling such subpar material.
Sexy Pete Buttigieg brings sweet sincerity and velvety smooth vocals to the blandest writing as her love interest, though Mitchell overchoreographs his solos to a distracting extent. Bergen wrings laughs from the most cliched jokes with a delicious sense of comic lunacy. McCleskey and Hale liven up the stalest archetypes with some terrific singing.[1] Prince massages her role, which has clearly been envisioned as a scene-stealer, with her considerable charm and showbiz smarts so suavely, you can almost believe the writers pulled off their jobs. And then there's poor DeRosa, stuck in a role that is excruciatingly misconceived, but executed on his part with laudatory technical precision and commitment. It saddened to me to think that he was on the same stage where he once gave a heartfelt performance as the Baker in Broadway's first revival of Into the Woods.
Mitchell should be commended for assembling such a stacked principal cast. He maintains the same standard of excellence with his ensemble, in which Morgan McGhee and Christian Probst in particular shine brightly in several small features. In previous productions, Mitchell’s choreography has sometimes prioritized tricks over dance. (If there were justice at the Tonys, his award for La Cage Aux Folles would read "Best Gymnastics in a Musical.") Here, however, he has done a wonderful job of fusing period style with a snappy Broadway vocabulary, much as he did with a different era in Hairspray. It's some of the best choreography of Mitchell's career, especially in the second act opener where he and Barnes keep bouncing the audience between the real and black-and-white worlds. It's a shame that their creativity has been expended on a song with lyrics basic enough to have been devised by one of the sixth-grade drama classes I taught.
It's surprising to me that I ended up having this much to say about Boop! when whatever the musical itself is trying to say is so unbelievably garbled, both figuratively and literally. (Gareth Owen's sound is the only weak link in the production's design, though I suppose it's possible he was endeavoring to spare us from hearing more of Birkenhead's lyrics.) Perhaps I could have saved both my readers and myself some time by simply writing, "Other than the music, lyrics, script, and concept, Boop! is good." I suppose I just needed the extra space to orient myself because the experience of seeing genuine excellence juxtaposed with so much that's dizzyingly dreadful—well, to paraphrase Helen Kane, it's so unusual.
And, hey!, it was better than Death Becomes Her.
the not-a-bottom line
🌈🌈 (out of five)
a guide to ticket-buying
With my TDF membership, I bought five tickets for the hunks in my book club and me for $61/each. We were split up into three seats in orchestra left row C, and two seats directly behind us in orchestra row D. Given the choreography and broad acting, this is definitely a musical where you’d benefit from sitting farther back and center.
a key to the pictures
The cast of Boop! performs "Where I Wanna Be" on The Today Show
I found this to be the musical’s only catchy song, but, dramaturgically, as an Act One closer, in context, it’s deeply unsatisfying. Act One closers should incentivize the audience to return for the second act with some new complication or plot development. The central conflict somehow needs to become more complex. Instead, this song repeatedly reports that Betty is…where she wants to be. Where is the conflict?!?
The cast of Boop! performs "The Color of Love" on The Today Show
Check out this clip for a glimpse of Pudgy, the puppy puppet who’s somehow adorable rather than creepy.
An episode of CUNY TV’s THEATER: All the Moving Parts does a roughly 60-minute deep dive with "‘Boop! The Musical’ Bringing Betty Boop to Broadway"
something to shout about
listen to the author read an edited version of this week’s substack below
[1] It’s worth mentioning that McCleskey, a beautiful Black woman, spends nearly the entire show in curly hair—until she emerges for her character’s big win near the end with…straight hair. Changing her wig to a traditionally white style when she experiences success struck me as tone deaf. Which, I suppose, is in keeping with Foster’s music.