By Matthew Wexler
In many ways, the Tony Awards broadcast feels like a high-profile audition. This year, the broadcast reached 4.85 million viewers. Nominated musicals were allotted three to five minutes to pitch their show to potential audiences.
But what that pressure-cooker excerpt rarely conveys, no matter the overzealous camera work or decibel-cranked money notes, is live theater’s ephemeral quality: chemistry. If you’ve sat in the dark and felt that quiver in your stomach, you know what I’m talking about. It’s that first glance between characters, or a held pose during a rapturous mid-show standing ovation. It’s our visceral response to music, dance, and visual stimuli—tools long used in therapy and healing.
In a 1,000-seat theater, chemistry can transcend the conventional pheromone response. Can I really pick up on Darren Criss’s scent from Row F in the balcony of the Belasco? This Broadway season proved, as Mama Rose sings, “You either have it, or you’ve had it.”
In our first “Take 5” feature, 1 Minute Critic takes more than our usual 60 seconds for a deeper dive into the 2024-25 Broadway season.
The lingering look that brings ‘Dead Outlaw’ to life
David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna’s folk-rock score for Dead Outlaw sounds like nothing else on Broadway right now—a lively embodiment of the real-life, post-mortem events that befell befuddled early 20th-century outlaw Elmer McCurdy. But one of the musical’s most compelling moments lands in silence: the first meeting between McCurdy (Andrew Durand) and his fiancée, Maggie (Julia Knitel), at a small-town general store.
Knitel’s lingering glance as the pair parts ways speaks volumes to their connection, however short-lived it may be. It came as no surprise that both Durand and Knitel earned Tony nominations, though the musical failed to land any wins, usurped instead by a more palatable death: Maybe Happy Ending’s slowly depleting Helperbot batteries.
“I think the beautiful and tragic thing about love is that it doesn’t matter how they treat you, if you love them, you love them,” Knitel told Gold Derby. “I love Andrew so much, it’s really easy to access. I just walk out there and see his dead body lying on a slab… as soon as the music starts, it just sort of takes me on the ride.”
No body better: ‘ Dead Outlaw’ is Broadway’s most unlikely hit
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‘Maybe Happy Ending’ proves chemistry doesn’t require humanity
Maybe Happy Ending was this year’s big winner at the Tonys, scoring six wins, including Best Musical. The story of two retired Helperbots had a slow start at the box office. An original musical without IP legs to keep it standing is a Broadway enigma these days. But so is the “it” factor.
“Despite not being human, Darren Criss and Helen J Chen have easy, endearing chemistry,” Washington Post theater critic Naveen Kumar tells 1 Minute Critic. “He’s the socially awkward loner to her relaxed and savvy girl next door. Opposites attract.” True, it takes two to tango, though the Tony nominating committee failed to give Chen a nod.
For me, the most captivating thrill was the pair’s relationship to their environment, from Oliver’s anticipation of what may slide out of the descending mail chute in his modular apartment, to the expansive peek inside their computer-programmed minds. The Tonys recognized scenic designer Dane Laffrey’s transformative work, but, unfortunately, there’s no award for video and projection design. If there were, George Reeve would need to find some extra shelf space.
“They’re far from photo-realistic backdrops,” Laffrey told Playbill. “Rather, they are an important way into the interior lives of our protagonists, which culminates in video designer George Reeve’s truly breathtaking erasure sequence at the climax of the show.”
In ‘John Proctor is the Villain’ and ‘Death Becomes Her,’ it’s a woman’s world
We often think of chemistry in a romantic sense, but this season proved that platonic connections can be just as palpable. And perhaps more nuanced than “just friends” may imply.
“There is delightful, though unspoken, sapphic chemistry between Madeline (Megan Hilty) and Helen (Jennifer Simard) in Death Becomes Her and between Shelby (Sadie Sink) and Raelynn (Amalia Yoo) in [Kimberly Bellflower’s] John Proctor is the Villain, the former of which lends to the camp, the latter of which is such a tender portrayal of teenage girlhood and female friendship,” theater critic and Medina Prize winner Christian Lewis tells 1 Minute Critic.
Bellflower’s play dismantles Arthur Miller’s classic, The Crucible, culminating in Shelby and Raelynn’s explosive classroom performance art that reclaims their power and transformation from girls into young women. But it comes at a cost. Their bond is informed, in part, by a patriarchal system designed to subjugate women. Though their connection can’t be extinguished.
“The play asks the vital question of when a witch hunt becomes a witch hunt,” Lewis wrote for Variety, “but also invites us to ponder who gets declared a witch, who are the hunters, and who deserves to be hunted.”
In ‘John Proctor is the Villain,’ Sadie Sink leads a powerful Gen Z takedown of ‘The Crucible’
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In contrast, Death Becomes Her gives us Broadway with a $31.5 million price tag. Both leading ladies were nominated for Tony Awards, but the only win was for Paul Tazewell’s couture costumes. Book writer Marco Pennette, tasked with adapting a familiar screenplay to the stage, makes the most of the frenemies trope, but it’s Hilty and Simard’s performances that seal the deal.
By necessity, big-budget musicals like these are staged and choreographed within an inch of their lives (no pun intended). Director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli struck gold twice with this pair, but there’s no elixir to keep them in the show indefinitely. Casting will be critical to keep Death Becomes Her alive and well on Broadway once they depart.
‘Smash’: The musical that couldn’t find its spotlight
Smash has become the first post-Tony casualty (following the footsteps of Tammy Faye and Swept Away, which both shuttered late last year). After closing on June 22, it will have played 84 performances. Maybe it was the decade-long break between the short-lived TV series and the musical adaptation that stopped the show in its tracks. Or perhaps that its principal performers were all riding different trains.
I was one of the few critics who gave Smash a positive review, writing at the time that the musical lives up to its name with an over-the-top theatricality and cheekiness that pulls back the curtain on the business of Broadway with a wink and a nod. I stand by that assessment. But I also loved director Susan Stroman’s productions of New York, New York and Bullets Over Broadway, so maybe I’m an NYC sentimentalist.
I can see where some might eye-roll at the triple battle for the spotlight between Ivy (Robyn Hurder), Karen (Caroline Bowman), and Chloe (Bella Coppola). It also doesn’t leave much room for the married songwriting duo’s (Krysta Rodriguez and John Behlman) marriage squabbles or the director (Brooks Ashmanskas) of the show within the show’s cast crush.
“Ashmanskas has little discernible spark with the Bombshell chorus boy who makes him glad to quit directing the show so they can finally date,” says Kumar. “Their fling is underwritten and strains credulity, like much of the rest of Smash.”
Lewis agreed, writing for Variety, “Due to all the tweaks, alterations, and differences in performance, some originalists may prefer to just watch the TV show online.”
As a lifelong theatergoer, perhaps I clung onto the real-life journeys of the musicals’ three Marilyns, each vying for that brief moment in the spotlight where they plead to the audience, “Let Me Be Your Star.”
Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darrin: For the gays and women who love them
The beauty of seeing a show at Circle in the Square is that the audience is an integral part of the production. The horseshoe-shaped theater offers ample opportunities to avert one’s gaze to check out how others are enjoying (or sleeping through) a performance.
Jonathan Groff as crooner Bobby Darrin takes full advantage of the set-up, dancing, flirting, and—if you’re close enough—spitting on anyone within reach.
I got into a conversation about Groff with Joy, a fellow theatergoer, before a performance of Hadestown with the current cast. (1MC takeaway: still a great show, but lacking the spark of the original Broadway company, particularly among the “worker” ensemble.)
“[Jonathan] offers a meditation on a performer’s relationship to the audience,” said Joy with the wisdom of Thespis of Icaria. I agree. Groff simultaneously embodies both actor and character. It’s an uncanny performance in which we’re fully aware of the evening’s theatricality, yet can’t escape his charismatic grip.
It’s not a spoiler to share that Darrin’s life was cut short due to congestive heart failure, but to look across the theater and witness a woman gasp in terror as the actor collapses on stage—that’s not something you can fake. So, too, did audience members rise to their feet during the finale, dancing with a kind of unabandoned joy you’d find at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah. The composite of these participants speaks to Groff’s crossover appeal, from his early theater days in Spring Awakening and last year’s Tony win for Merrily We Roll Along to out-and-proud gay performances on screen, such as the TV series Looking and recent feature film A Nice Indian Boy.
Thanks to his magnetic pull on audiences, perhaps we should start calling Groff Mr. Catalyst—an element or compound that sparks reaction.
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