Just in Time. Book by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver. Based on an original concept by Ted Chapin. Directed by Alex Timbers. Choreography by Shannon Lewis. Music supervision and arrangements by Andrew Resnick. Orchestrations by Andrew Resnick and Michael Thurber. Music coordinator David Lai. Scenic design by Derek McLane. Costume design by Catherine Zuber. Lighting design by Justin Townsend. Sound design by Peter Hylenski. Wig and hair design by Tom Watson. Makeup design by Suki Tsujimoto. Intimacy director and audience interaction by Leigh Zimmerman. Associate director Susanna Wolk. Associate choreographer Grace LeMieux.
Cast: Jonathan Groff, Valeria Yamin, Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, Michele Pawk, Emily Bergl, Caesar Samayoa, Gracie Lawrence, Lance Roberts, Joe Barbara, and Erika Henningsen.
Theater: Circle in the Square
Tickets: Telecharge.com

Jonathan Groff Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

It is certainly an intriguing set-up for this jukebox musical in which Jonathan Groff stars as himself and as singer, songwriter, and actor Bobby Darin. Fans of one or both (and the enthusiastic SRO crowd at the performance I attended suggests there are plenty of them around) will find themselves well entertained by Groff's engaging and thoroughly committed performance and the show's gossipy storyline that writers Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver have compiled from a dive into Darin's biography and sizzling career that ended abruptly with his death from heart disease at the age of 37 in December 1973. Hint: It wasn't all a bouquet of 18 yellow roses.

Enter the theater, and you will find yourself transported to a humongous nightclub. It could be the Hakkasan in Vegas or the Copa in New York or the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Anyway, you know the look. As you are being seated, a handful of you who are willing to spring for the price of $500 apiece will be at café tables on the main floor, where you will be privy to some up-close-and-personal time with the combo pack that is Groff/Darin.

The rest of you will be spread out in standard theater seats in the Circle in the Square's horseshoe shape. A word of advice, though. Check the seating chart before ordering your tickets, or you may find yourself having to twist your body 90 degrees to be able to see what's unfolding on the mainstage. An effort to assuage this has some of the performances taking place on the main floor or across to the other side of the room, which then gives those café table sitters their own opportunity to swivel around.

There's also something interesting going on with the entrance music being piped in while you are wending your way to your seat. Instead of any of Darin's hits, what you hear is akin to a "Music Minus One" recording, the sound of musicians performing their supporting accompaniment without the lead singer to carry the tune. It's both intriguing and rather annoying, like desultory vamps being endlessly repeated until, finally, BAM, we are suddenly in the midst of one of Darin's sets as Groff pours on an explosive performance of "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," followed by "Just in Time." It's good. He's good. In keeping with the flashy setting, he is joined in the act by a trio of spangle-clad dancers, "the three sirens" (Valeria Yamin, Christine Cornish, and Julia Grondin), all of whom show up in multiple roles throughout the evening). It's all as thrillingly and glitzy fake as Vegas ever gets.

Erika Henningsen Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Explanations are proffered, and a great deal is made of the fact that doctors had warned him that he faced an early demise owing to multiple heart-damaging bouts of rheumatic fever as a child. He was, therefore, single-mindedly driven to find success as a singer and songwriter while he could. He also was in a complicated family situation, in which he bonded mostly with Polly Walden (Michele Pawk, giving a touching down-to-earth performance), a kind of Auntie Mame figure Darin believes to be his biological mother. It is she, a former vaudevillian singer, who encourages him to pursue his dream no matter what.

The Bobby Darin story is also enhanced by the two special relationships with women who were as famous as he was striving to be. The first is Connie Francis (Gracie Lawrence), already established as a singer when they meet and he sells her one of his songs. The two are madly in love, but Francis' father breaks them apart. A few years later, when Darin is preparing to make his first movie, he falls for his co-star, Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen), who, like Francis, already has a solid career going when they get together. It's all a bit "Days of Our Lives" in its soapiness, but, especially with Sandra Dee, Darin shows himself to be inexorably self-centered.

Just in Time, developed and directed by Alex Timbers, is blessed with a terrific supporting cast, with fine performances all around. But, of course, the show rests on the showmanship of Jonathan Groff, who would seem to embrace the entire audience with his self-deprecating humor, his comfort in showing us his doppelgänger, warts and all, and, above all, offering up his terrific singing that encompasses Bobby Darin's career from start to end, from "Splish Splash" to "Mack the Knife" to "If I Were a Carpenter."

Darin seemed to be able to master all the different modes of music that he was exposed to during his career. He studied what worked, and he had no qualms about trying on every style, from Elvis to Frank Sinatra and everyone in between that he could learn from and imitate. Somehow, even with his many different experiments at making and remaking himself, he was able to bring audiences along with him. That, too, is something that Groff delivers in spades, determined to draw us in at least as much as the man he portrays ever did. And so he does, singing from the heart, throwing in some fancy footwork, playing the piano and a couple of other instruments, and always engaging with the audience. Just like Darin. Whatever it takes.