Review Roundup: Is 'Smash' a Smash on Broadway?

When "Smash" first aired on NBC in 2012, it was one of the shows audiences either loved or hated. After its smashing pilot episode, it was easy to see why someone could both love and hate it. The show followed the creation of a musical (called "Bombshell") about Marilyn Monroe and its torturous search for a leading lady. Today that seems like a dated notion because the economy of Broadway would demand a bankable star head a project that would be.

"Smash," which opened Thursday night at the Imperial Theatre, is said to have cost $20M, and hasn't any bankable stars, hoping to make it on its title alone. Instead in the roles played by Megan Hilty and Catherine McPhee, who were the rivals to play Marilyn in "Bombshell" are two below-the-marquee actresses, Robyn Hurder and Caroline Bowman. (For the record, Hilty is starring in the season's biggest new hit "Death Becomes Her.") In supporting roles "Smash" features such Broadway regulars as Brooks Ashmanskas, Kristine Nielsen and Krysta Rodriguez, the latter being the only performer retained from the television series.

A stage version of the TV series, which was developed by playwright Theresa Rebeck, has long been in the works after the show was cancelled. Over its 13-year gestation, Rebeck was dropped from the process, replaced by Rick Elice ("Jersey Boys") and Bob Martin ("The Prom" and "Boop," which recently opened), who created a new narrative while retaining the series' characters; as well as the Tony-winning team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, ("Hairspray," "Some Like It Hot") to augment the songs they wrote for the series. Also on hand is choreographer Joshua Bergasse, who created the dance on the show, with direction by Susan Stroman, a renowned choreographer most famous for having done both roles for the mega-hit "The Producers" in 2001.

So is "Smash" a smash? It likely is due the fact that Jesse Green in the New York Times went ga-ga over the show. A rave from the Times generally guarantees a show's success, though when "Swept Away" opened earlier this year, his rave couldn't save that ambitious musical from sinking. But "Smash" isn't about a grim shipwreck involving cannibalism; instead has a well-known property with a built-in audience eager to see it replicated on stage. And Green's rave will likely be enough to make it Broadway's latest mega-hit.

Others weren't as kind as Greene, some even deeming it a failure. Here is a sampling of the reviews:

Jesse Green, The New York Times

(Critic's Pick). "Great musical comedies are great mysteries, and not just because they're so rare. They're also mysteries in the way they operate. To succeed, they must keep far ahead of the audience, like thrillers with twists you can't see coming. They are whodunits with songs instead of murders.

"'Smash,' which opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, is more of a who'll-do-it, and when the big song comes, it's a killer. But the effect is the same: It's the great musical comedy no one saw coming...

"As the plot touches down for its perfect landing, I was surprised again by the turn of events. Not only the ones in the plot but also the ones well beyond it. "Smash" the musical is a kind of reclamation of "Smash" the series, and probably a kind of revenge as well. You won't see the program credit for Theresa Rebeck, the series' creator, without a microscope. For some fans, the changes may feel like a desecration.

"For the rest of us, a real musical comedy is a cause for celebration; most are either too tuneless to be musicals or too dull to be comedies. The true mystery of "Smash" is how such a messy makeover produced such a sterling example of both."

Johnny Oleksinski, The New York Post

"Last I checked, the NBC TV series that inspired the rancid show that opened Thursday night at the Imperial was canceled after two seasons because critics and audiences rightly abandoned it.

"To call the program culty would be generous. 'Smash' is credited by some with popularizing the term 'hate-watch.'

"Now, twelve years later, much of the backstage drama's creative team has doubled-down on their failure and produced something far, far worse.

"It's hard to judge whose decisions are more misguided: those of the back-stabbing, wacky creators of 'Bombshell,' the fictional musical comedy about Marilyn Monroe we see implode, or the very real minds (Robert Greenblatt, Steven Spielberg, Susan Stroman) behind the disaster that is 'Smash.'...

"All night, nobody – including Hurder and Bowman – stands out. They're not allowed to. And the musical isn't really a tight ensemble piece, either. The messy material forces the cast to blend into one banal blob, talented though they are."

Kristen Baldwin, Entertainment Weekly

"'Smash,' the Broadway musical based on NBC's short-lived drama, features plenty of Easter eggs for those of us who loved (or hate-watched) all 32 episodes of that infamously ludicrous show. But the theatrical production – written by Bob Martin and Rick Elice and featuring Marc Shaiman's and Scott Wittman's music from the TV series – goes beyond winky homage. With its transition to the stage, 'Smash' finally realizes its full potential as a hilarious, pointed satire that both skewers and celebrates the Great White Way...

"If the second act – a collection of other notable numbers from the series' oeuvre, including Bowman's visceral rendition of 'They Just Keep Moving the Line' – feels rushed and a little disjointed, it doesn't dampen the show's buoyant energy. 'Smash' exists to sing the praises of the many, many talented people on and off the stage that it takes to bring a blockbuster musical to life. As much as I loved that mess on NBC, it's clear 'Smash' belonged on Broadway all along. Grade: A-"

Adrian Horton, The Guardian

(Four Stars out of Five). "By most metrics, 'Smash,' the erstwhile NBC series about the drama-filled production of a comedic Marilyn Monroe musical, was a failure. The show had high expectations – it was developed and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, championed by the then-head of NBC, stocked with Broadway pedigree and supported by a robust network TV budget. It boasted a mix of high-wattage screen talent (Debra Messing, Anjelica Huston), new blood (American Idol alum Katharine McPhee) and established stage veterans (Megan Hilty, Christian Borle). And it featured pop music covers and original musical theater tracks, promising what should have been, as one friend loves to put it, 'Glee' for adults.

"Yet after initial critical praise following its February 2012 premiere, the show quickly became a laughing stock, an appointment hate-watch for its whiplash tonal shifts, unsympathetic lead characters and bad scarves. It was canceled after just two seasons. But in our post-post-post irony world, time has been kind to the bizarre misfire. In the decade since it last aired, 'Smash' has become a beloved IYKYK cultural artifact, the type of failure whose wild delusion and total lack of sense aged into fine camp.

Now, the metamorphosis is complete: 'Smash' has made it to Broadway, as an actually good musical about the troubled production of a bad musical about one of the most troubled celebrities of all time. With a book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice, this iteration of Smash is, in fact, even more meta than advertised: the very loosely adapted plot seems inspired by the show's own infamously (to a certain slice of millennial pop culture nerds) troubled production, in which creator/showrunner Theresa Rebeck allegedly over-identified with a character, turning into a professional monster and alienating the crew, all unimpeded by the theater geek network head. (Yes, there was a BuzzFeed exposé.)...

"... Like its predecessor, 'Smash' has its bumpy moments, occasionally veering into preening sincerity when silliness works far better. Not all of the musical numbers successfully shoulder the heavy burden of advancing both the Marilyn of 'Bombshell' and the characters of 'Smash.'
But the ones who do, particularly 'Let Me Be Your Star' and the final extra-meta number, provide what 'Smash' has always delivered, to some: fun. Both the haters and the defenders get the last laugh. A real-life musical celebrating willful delusion in the name of Broadway is perhaps the best possible tribute to the 'Smash' of yore, and an enjoyable two-and-a-half hours at the theater for everyone else."

Jackson McHenry, Vulture
Story behind a firewall.

"...Once a deliciously hate-watchable prime-time NBC drama with a killer pilot and a steep drop-off in quality, 'Smash' has gone through more than a decade of reworking, including attempts to stage the musical-within-the-show straight-up, and has finally arrived on Broadway overmasticated and gummy. You would think a musical predicated on mess might have a better sense of humor about its own existence...

"I'm a sucker for a self-referential theatrical tale. Give me an 'All That Jazz' or a '42ndStree't and I'm happy. But in the version of 'Smash' that made it to the stage, the magic flickers out. You can imagine the characters in a meta-retelling of the show yelling at one another trying to find where they went wrong... The ingredients are all there, yet the theatrical bread never rises. Did someone say the name of the Scottish Play backstage? Do good musicals appear only to the pure of heart? Should they have spun around three times, spit on their palms, and flipped a lucky penny into the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool?

"The answer, in this case, may be that for a musical like this to be good, it has to embrace being ridiculous. Musicals, even great ones, are ridiculous. People spend millions of dollars on concepts like 'What if the Founding Fathers rapped?' and sometimes they even make their money back. 'Smash' is tragically afraid of being bad – and worse, it wants to be respectable. Funnily enough, back in 'Smash's' open workshops last year, the show ended in a major character's death. That is, to be clear, an insane way to end a musical comedy. It's also way more compelling than the ending the 'Smash' creative team has put onstage after all the rewrites, one that risks nothing. Though please, everybody, don't take my note: If you want to succeed in this business, you have to admit to yourself that you're never going to satisfy everyone – and never read what people write online."

Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
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"Is it any surprise that this musical, based on the NBC drama series, is such a bizarre, loopy mess? Probably not to the fans who were glued to the two shenanigans-packed seasons of Smash–which ran between 2012 and 2013–who became used to it boomeranging from one contorted plot point to another. (The infamous spiked smoothie incident of the TV show is redrawn as a laxative-dosed cupcake in the musical.)...

"The show's fanbase remained devoted at the time, and–producers of the musical are banking on–to this day; the show about the fraught genesis of one, then two competing Broadway musicals, was full of souped-up soapy twists, theater insider jokes, and famous-person cameos. It was also great fun, and featured fizzing musical numbers in every episode, with–just as the Broadway show does–music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman.

"However, the laborious dud of a musical now bearing its name doesn't seem to know what it is, and its most needless act of self-sabotage is that it screws its own fans over."

Greg Evans, Deadline

"Thirteen years later, 'Smash The Musical' arrives on Broadway with some of the most talented creatives and actors working today. More inspired by than based on, more fan fiction or parody than homage, the production opening tonight at the Imperial Theatre is more oddity than anything else...

"It's not that the musical all goes wrong, exactly. With a cast as good as this one – Robyn Hurder, The Prom's Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann and the invaluable Kristine Nielsen, just for starters – Smash is thoroughly watchable from start to rather overlong finish. Unlike the series, there isn't the precipitous drop in quality that so alienated many of the original's early fans. Instead, 'Smash The Musical' starts just well enough, and stays there...

"Perhaps most perplexing about 'Smash,' though, is its weirdly cynical, ungenerous take on the Bombshell herself. For a musical, and a musical within a musical, that gives lip service to her cultural value, 'Smash The Musical' treats Monroe as a perpetual punchline. Ivy-as-Marilyn is an inconsiderate, amphetamine guzzling faux-intellectual whose devotion to the acting craft is presented as a vainglorious affectation. This Marilyn is without even a smidge of the sweetness and vulnerability that features in even the most cliched takes on the icon. Hurder does her best with what she's given, but we leave 'Smash The Musical' baffled as to what all the fuss was about."

Christian Lewis, Variety

"It's clear that the writers decided to lean into the metatheatricality of the endeavor, embracing the fact that this is, after all, a musical and not a television show. They play with musical theater conventions, include references to Broadway productions, actors, and locales (from Orso to Sardi's), and most significantly, shift the tone. They fully deliver on the drama and laughter (less so on "the tears just like pearls," but that's ok); this 'Smash' is wholeheartedly a comedy, something that Nielson and Ashmanskas understand best. Ashmanskas uses his classic campy comedy in a way that fully accepts this 'Smash,' entirely letting go of the previous iteration...

"In a key deviation from the original, in which 'Bombshell' won Tony awards, here 'Bombshell' is a flop. This gets at a core problem of adapting this material, and may explain why the creative team switched from developing 'Bombshell' to creating 'Smash': as a musical, 'Bombshell' was intentionally unformed; we only see the songs, and they are a ceaseless stream of Marilyn solos and big production numbers, which would create many logistical staging problems – not to mention the fact that most of the book was never sketched out. This 'Smash' skirts these issues by declaring "Bombshell" an artistic failure, taking the easy way out; it's a bit defeatist, and some might have rather seen 'Bombshell' staged on its own and be given a chance to judge it ourselves.

The main advantage would have been letting the score, the show's true highlight, shine more. It's sometimes hard to fully enjoy and appreciate all the stunning songs in this production, especially since many are clipped, staged as rehearsals, or removed from their 'Bombshell' context.

"... After all this wait, it is undeniably thrilling and deeply enjoyable to experience these beloved songs on stage, and to get some more time with this dramatic band of thespians. So for those fans dying for more 'Smash' content, this musical will absolutely scratch that (more than seven-year) itch; for those uninitiated, this production offers a high-energy, fun musical comedy with a phenomenal score. Either way, it is, in fact, what you've been needing."