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Alex Brightman in Schmigadoon! (Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) |
I'd already visited Schmigadoon! once, but I was more than delighted with my return trip. The stage version of Cinco Paul's musical sitcom is as charming as the original Apple TV series, and a hilarious highlight of a Broadway season marked by a dearth of new tuners.
Little has been changed, except for the cast. Sara Chase and Alex Brightman now star as Melissa and Josh, a couple who find their relationship stymied and, Brigadoon style, stumble upon a land that time forgot (and where everyone hits the high notes and knows the dance steps).
A fan of musicals, Melissa takes to the townsfolk as they burst into song. Josh, on the other hand, fills with dread every time he senses another number coming up. And that's just the beginning of their problems. When they find themselves unable to leave until they find true love, each ends up searching for it among the local community, which is populated with people who bear a striking resemblance to characters from such classic musicals as Oklahoma!, Carousel, The Music Man and The Sound of Music.
Paul has great affection for the genre's golden age, but also a wicked sense of humor about its eccentricities. So we meet minister's wife Mildred Layton (Ana Gasteyer), steadfastly determined to uphold the town morals. Her showstopping number, "Tribulation," is a terrific riff on Harold Hill's "Trouble" from The Music Man. Melissa is tempted by the sexy Danny Bailey (Max Clayton), a stand-in for Carousel's antihero Billy Bigelow, who sings a perfect pastiche of his "Soliloquy." Josh, meanwhile, deals with the flirtatious Betsy (the hilarious McKenzie Kurtz), a stand-in for Oklahoma!'s Ado Annie.
The show includes some new songs, but the best ones are from the TV series: the silly Emmy-winning ditty "Corn Puddin' "; the matrimonial earworm "Cross That Bridge"; and the retitled "Baby Talk," in which Melissa explains, in graphic detail, human reproduction to a pair of naive Schmigadoonians.
It's great fun, and the entire cast is terrific, although Brightman's detached demeanor until Josh's denouement had me longing for Keegan-Michael Key's more playful approach to the character onscreen. One caveat: As someone who loved the TV show, I got what I was expecting and thoroughly enjoyed it. If Schmigadoon! could have surprised me in some way, I would have loved it even more.
