Summary
Transforming the theatre into an immersive nightclub, this bio-musical chronicles the frantic, meteoric rise of entertainer Bobby Darin. The story tracks his journey from a sickly child in the Bronx to a multi-genre superstar, fueled by a childhood diagnosis that predicted he wouldn’t live past age 15.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 at 8:00 PM Apr 2, 2025, 8:00 PM
Of all the ostensibly dramatic works I’ve seen on stage, the quality of the material probably matters the least here. The creators clearly worked backwards from the idea that Jonathan Groff should sing a Bobby Darin concert on Broadway, and they’ve managed to reverse-engineer just about the loosest possible approximation of a biomusical around him. Even for the genre, this is pretty light fare.
That’s not to drag it, because it’s basically entirely successful in execution. The lucky thing for all of us is that Jonathan is the type of performer that can get away with something like this, and he blows the doors off the building playing himself sort-of-playing Bobby. He’s every bit as damp as advertised, oozing charisma and other fluids all over the stage for practically the entire runtime.
The rest of the company admirably fills in the gaps. The three sirens especially are performing some serious feats of cardiovascular endurance both on- and off-stage. The venue is perfectly intimate. The stage looks gorgeous. If you allow yourself to have a good time, you almost definitely will.