Broadway Reviews Theatre Review by Howard Miller - April 10, 2025 Smash Book by Rick Elice and Bob Martin. Music by Marc Shaiman. Lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. Directed by Susan Stroman. Choreographer Joshua Bergasse. Scenic design by Beowulf Boritt. Costume design by Alejo Vietti. Lighting design by Ken Billington. Sound design by Brian Ronan. Video and projection design by S. Katy Tucker. Hair design by Charles G. LaPointe. Makeup design by Joe Dulude II. Orchestrations by Doug Besterman. Music supervision by Stephen Oremus. Vocal arrangements by Stephen Oremus and Marc Shaiman. Dance and incidental music arrangements by Sam Davis. Music director Paul Staroba. Music coordinator Michael Aarons. Associate director Leah Hoffmann. Associate choreographer Jenny Laroche.
Briefly, Smash, with a book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice, music by Marc Shaiman, and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman, is a backstage story about the creation of a big budget musical about Marilyn Monroe, titled Bombshell. On the face of it, the issue the creative team working on Bombshell is wrestling with is the image of Marilyn they should focus on. Keep it surface genial, or dig a little deeper into some of the sad facts of her biography? Bombshell's director and choreographer, Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas), is willing to gently explore the more serious side, but he insists, "this show will not end with Marilyn lying in her bed naked and dead." (Uh, huh. "Chekhov's gun," anybody?) It's a risky business putting together a show about a troubled show. "Meta" will take you just so far unless you go completely out on a limb, like, say, with Noises Off or The Play That Goes Wrong. But, instead, the creative team behind Smash, including, apparently, director Susan Stroman, wants to have it both ways as we watch the development of a series of freestanding production numbers (Joshua Bergasse choreographs, as he did for the NBC version) using songs of which more than half are taken directly from the original by the same composer/lyricist team. What has been discarded is just about everything to do with the personal lives of the characters, along with the tension derived from the competition between two actresses vying to play the role of Marilyn. What we are left with, then, is the tsuris of getting Bombshell up on its feet. Instead of the rivalry between two potential Marilyns, we have a friendship that is all but destroyed by the increasingly odd behavior of Bombshell's designated star, Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder).
As the rehearsals progress, and Ivy grows increasingly difficult to work with and self-absorbed as 24-hours-a-day Marilyn, the leadership team begins to wonder if she should be fired and replaced by Karen. Through a convoluted complication, a third character, Nigel's associate director Chloe (Bella Coppola), enters into the mix as a potential replacement. That's basically the plot. Toss in nearly two dozen songs and production numbers, and cycle and recycle some jokes. Just need to round it out with stock characters like Bombshell's producer Anita (Jacqueline B. Arnold) and the married couple of lyricist/bookwriter Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez) and her composer husband Jerry (John Behlmann), who are not above recycling songs from their own past less-successful ventures. Stir it all up, et voila, you've got yourself an all-to-familiar backstage show. There is one other character and plot element that ought to be mentioned. That would be Scott (Nicholas Matos), Anita's Gen Z assistant, who has been brought on board for two reasons: to give a job to the son of a major investor in Bombshell, and to tap into his knowledge of social media in order to generate some buzz among potential theatregoers in his age cohort. Although Scott, too, is a device for piling on repeated jokes, mostly about his lack of knowledge about musical theatre, the social media bit does lead to one of the funnier moments in the evening. It comes near the end, when, in a scene that is reminiscent of a similar one in the recent Broadway production of Eureka Day, we are shown a quick series of posts by social media influencers who were invited to the first preview. Their comments and short TikTok-like video clips are quite laugh-provoking, even when they cut closer to the bone than Smash's creators might have intended. Not to spoil the fun, but here's one example: "They promised us The Producers, and they gave us Parade." Or, as Brooks Ashmanskas's character puts it when he becomes the sacrificial lamb to appease the naysayers: "To think we set out to make a light-hearted, life-affirming musical, to bring a little joy into the world." Yup. Now that's about as "meta," or maybe it's ironic, as Smash could possibly get.
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