Delightful and delicious? No — it’s DeLorean.
“Back To The Future: The Musical,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, doesn’t have much going for it in the way in which of tuneful songs, show-stopping dances or enthralling storytelling. However it does have a star vehicle.
Two and a half hours, with one intermission. On the Winter Garden Theatre, 1634 Broadway.
Its very own Wells Fargo Time Machine. A Chitty Chitty Flux Capacitor. A Greased (Struck By) Lightnin’.
Onstage, the famous DeLorean drives, spins, flies and turns the other way up with the actors inside it. The hotrod is the most important special effect the Winter Garden Theatre has seen since “Rocky the Musical” plopped a boxing ring in the course of the orchestra nearly 10 years ago.
But Huey Lewis didn’t sing “Power of Automobile,” he sang “Power of Love.” And heart is totally absent from director John Rando’s shiny and serviceable staging of the beloved 1985 science-fiction movie.
Coursing emotion, teen angst and can-do scrappiness are what set director Robert Zemeckis’ original film other than other entries within the time-travel genre. “Back To The Future” wasn’t HG Wells or “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.” And it’s hardly remembered as a flashy spectacle, either. The flick was a fun ‘80s adventure romp a couple of guitarist who winds up in 1955 Most important Street, America.
“Future” didn’t star anyone serious like Charlton Heston in “The Planet of the Apes,” but as a substitute solid smart-aleck Michael J. Fox, who was then best referred to as the hilarious Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties.”
On Broadway, nevertheless, now we have a bloated gizmo no person asked for that, while enjoyable in parts and with an embraceable star in Casey Likes as Marty, never justifies its perplexing existence as a stage musical. “Reenact the movie, sure,” the audience sits there considering. “But please stop singing.”
Besides its unlucky songs and a few 2023 tweaks — Doc Brown (Roger Bart) now gets plutonium poisoning initially as a substitute of being shot to death by Libyan terrorists — the show is beat-for-beat the identical plot because the film up until a more neatly wrapped-up ending.
Marty McFly (Likes) continues to be a high school-hating rebel whose geeky father George (Hugh Coles) has grown right into a sad-sack disappointment that’s consistently tormented by his bully boss Biff (Nathaniel Hackman). So Marty seeks refuge at the house of Doc, the local Hill Valley, Calif., mad scientist.
During a nighttime parking-lot demo of his recent DeLorean time machine, Doc is fatally poisoned. So, the child must return in time to avoid wasting his friend’s life. But, whoops, the automotive runs out of juice at his destination and he’s stuck for good in 1955. So it’s as much as Past Doc to assist Marty return … to the long run!
Hyperactive Bart does to Doc exactly what he did to Fredrick in “Young Frankenstein”: talks ultra-fast, grimaces and shouts. His Brown is a clown who’s not possible to care one iota about, let alone 1.2 gigawatts. His one big song called “twenty first Century,” a trippy dream sequence initially of Act 2, is the show’s most important departure from the movie. However it’s hampered by a creepy, ’90s KoolAid cult vibe.
Where the show somewhat finds its way are the scenes featuring the younger versions of Marty’s mom Lorraine (Liana Hunt) and pop. By coming in touch with them — she gets the hots for her own kid — he screws up the world’s timeline and potentially his very existence. Subsequently, Marty must make sure that the ‘rents meet and fall in love on the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance.
Those hormonal shenanigans at the very least allow for some amusing broad comedy onstage, mostly featuring the superb Coles as geeky George. Coles, at first, does a terrifyingly spot-on Crispin Glover impression, after which finds artfulness in mimicry by exaggerating his movements in a highly theatrical way. His learning-to-be-cool duet with Likes, called “Put Your Mind To It,” is one in every of the one songs you’ll remember all night.
Otherwise the rating, by Glen Ballard (of “Jagged Little Pill” fame), is awful at any time when it’s not borrowing from Alan Silvestri’s rousing theme music from the film. You’ll note its inferiority when excellent songs from the movie, reminiscent of “Johnny B. Goode” and “Power of Love” are performed amid all the trendy mediocrity.
And the audience is particularly grateful for the famous old one-liners (“Great Scot!,” “Ronald Reagan? The actor?!”) when the unique screenwriter Bob Gale’s recent book gives Doc a cringey joke about COVID.
Marty marks the second iconic movie-to-stage role for Likes in a lacking musical adaptation, after last season’s “Almost Famous.” He’s undoubtedly an enormous talent and he brings the identical gee-whiz energy here that’s really easy for an audience to root for. How unlucky that he’s been done such a disservice by this forgettable music. He’s a much better singer than the musical lets him be.
Some will insist that the show is supposed for “Back to the Future” super fans only. Well, speaking as one in every of those super fans who has watched the film trilogy countless times to the purpose of “Pledge of Allegiance”-like recitation, the musical left me cold and uninvolved.
It made me need to return… to the movie!