It might be time to call it quits on biographical jukebox musicals. “Jersey Boys” ignited a trend, but its many spawn have been mostly ill-conceived. Recently we’ve had “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical,” “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations,” “The Cher Show,” “MJ,” “Tina,” “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical,” and this season’s short-lived “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical.” To this less-than-honorable list we can now add “Just in Time,” based on the life and music of Bobby Darin, starring Jonathan Groff (“Hamilton,” “Looking”).
The biographical jukebox is perhaps the worst sub-genre of musical. They’re often little more than musicalized Wikipedia articles, rapidly cycling through an artist’s career, diluting their life into a two-hour show filled with as many hit songs as possible. “Just in Time” exacerbates this, oversimplifying but also failing to give us any real sense of Darin. Born in 1936 in Harlem as a sickly child, he eventually became a musician, a singer-songwriter, and an actor, achieving fame in the late 1950s with hits like “Dream Lover” and covers of “Beyond the Sea” and “Mack the Knife.”
Unlike some jukeboxes, which have a decades-long career to cover, this musical is more manageable because Darin died at only 37. Yet somehow, book writers Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver give us even less detail than most bio-jukeboxes. Most of “Just in Time” focuses on Darin from age 19, when he started writing music, to 31, when he divorced his first wife, Hollywood sweetheart Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen). (His second wife has been cut out entirely.) The final third of his career is swiftly covered in about fifteen minutes at the end of the show: his political career, his failed turn to folk music, his bankruptcy, and his descent into a trailer-dwelling recluse are all covered in a single monologue, delivered for some unknown reason by Sandra Dee.
In theory, jukebox musicals exist to show off a discography, but only about a third of the songs in “Just in Time” were written by Darin. In addition to his original songs, he was known for his covers, which explains this a bit. However, there are quite a few songs in this musical that were not even performed by Darin: The creative team have incorporated songs performed by Elvis and Vaughn Monroe (both of whom Darin tried to copy), as well as by Darin’s early-career girlfriend, Connie Francis (played by Gracie Lawrence of “Sex Lives of College Girls”). For a jukebox musical, it doesn’t do a great job celebrating Darin’s original work.
It is the central irony — and the musical’s core problem — that “Just in Time” presents itself openly as a glorified tribute concert. The show begins with a confounding announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, please, put your hands together and welcome to the stage…Jonathan Groff!” Then Groff comes up an elevator trap door, like a 2000s pop star entering a stadium tour. He sings two of Darin’s best songs, as himself, and gives a speech about how he has always loved Darin ever since he was “a child twirling in [his] mother’s heels in Pennsylvania Amish country, listening to [his] father’s records.”
Soon after he jumps into Darin mode, often snapping his fingers to freeze the action and talk directly to the audience (a hallmark of lazy writing), but you can never shake the realization that this is basically just Groff singing Bobby Darin tunes at 54 Below. Derek McLane’s art deco, Copacabana-inspired set brings the band onstage and features cafe tables on the floor (the production as a whole completely wastes and disregards the Circle in the Square theater’s thrust, functionally treating this as a proscenium stage). Though the set shifts slightly, it never really changes; visually we are always at the Copa, which limits the potential of the musical to fully immerse us in the story.
For such a talented actor and singer — Groff is fresh off a Tony win for “Merrily We Roll Along” — it’s hard not to feel let down by his performance. He’s given very little to work with as an actor, and the songs are neither vocally challenging nor particularly interesting to listen to. Making matters worse, there isn’t much else beyond Groff. All the other characters lack depth, best symbolized by The Sirens (Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, and Valeria Yamin), a trio of leggy backup dancers who are doomed to bounce behind Groff in perpetuity and execute a never-ending stream of quick changes. Michele Pawk is an idealized mother and an underutilized Emily Bregl is an often yelled-at sister. Henningson does her best with what she is given, but Lawrence is not up to the task, coming across as an over-eager, one-note Midge Maisel replica (though she has quite the voice).
After Darin dies, Groff delivers a cloying speech, telling us “every breath we take is a gift we get to open.” The show concludes with a megamix, which has some questionable arrangement choices. “Dream Lover,” the clear crowd favorite (which was only featured in a truncated, under-staged number at the top of act two) is only briefly included. The main position of prominence is given to “Splish Splash,” which may have been his first hit, but is a mindless song which Darin states, in this musical, that he does not want to be associated with or remembered for after he dies.
Director Alex Timbers and the book writers fail to go beyond the concert conceit, and never give us a real portrait of Darin or leave us with a clear idea of what we are supposed to think of him. The musical offers us brief glimpses into how poorly he treated many of the people in life, particularly women. Groff and the team obviously love him and his work, but are we meant to?
Darin comes off as a bit of a hack, a copycatting musical parrot — part Elvis, part Sinatra, part anyone who was charting — without a voice of his own. Although a bio-jukebox need not necessarily glorify its subject, it must at minimum justify why they are the subject of a musical in the first place, which “Just in Time” never does. Over the course of the musical, you likely will have learned very little about Darin, and unless you entered a devotee, there’s a slim chance you’ll leave one. The musical does almost nothing to convince the audience of Darin’s talent or clarify what about him makes him a fitting or worthy subject of exploration.
Contrary to its title, “Just in Time” is anything but timely, since the window of Darin’s relevancy has long gone. Even Darin himself admits in the show that by 1968 he was “yesterday’s news.” Just in time for what, we might ask? Do we really need a whole musical about a straight white man with a few hit songs in the 60s? For that matter, do we need multiple? This is in fact the second Bobby Darin musical (the other, “Dream Lover,” premiered in Australia in 2016), not to mention the Kevin Spacey-led biopic, “Beyond the Sea” from 2004. Does Bobby Darrin really merit this much attention?
While flopping at a concert at the Copa (sound familiar?) Darin tells fans, “if they want to hear the old songs they should go home and play records” — which is good advice for those considering seeing “Just in Time,” who are indeed better off just listening to the originals at home. One positive thing will have come out of this musical, though: it might just be the final nail in the bio-jukebox coffin.
#Jonathan #Groff #Plays #Bobby #Darin #Broadway
