It’s 2024, and Huey Lewis is having a moment. Just let that sink in.
Lewis was an sudden spotlight of the latest Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” concerning the star-studded 1985 session the place “We Are the World” was recorded. An everyman rocker, Lewis was amazed (and nonetheless is) that he was rubbing elbows with Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner and Bruce Springsteen. He even acquired to sing the half initially supposed for Prince.
Now comes the brand new Broadway present “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” which isn’t a lot a Huey Lewis (and the News) musical because the Huey Lewis of musicals: not taking itself too significantly, doing what it does effectively, and simply completely satisfied to be on Broadway, retaining firm with starrier productions.
Like most jukeboxes, “The Heart of Rock and Roll” shoehorns large hits, together with “The Power of Love” and “Stuck With You,” with lesser-known tracks right into a plot generic sufficient to accommodate them.
Set in 1987, Jonathan A. Abrams’s e-book, based mostly on a narrative by Tyler Mitchell and Abrams, facilities on Bobby (Corey Cott, from the underrated “Bandstand”), an worker at an ailing cardboard field producer, Stone Incorporated, in Milwaukee. Bobby works on the meeting line, however he actually needs to affix the gross sales division so he can “Be Someone,” because the present’s new track places it. Wait, no, possibly what he actually needs is to rock out along with his previous band, the Loop. Bobby may sing “It’s Hip to Be Square,” however deep down, does he actually consider it?
By now you might need seen that desires play an enormous half in “The Heart of Rock and Roll.” There are quite a few references to chasing the dream, making it come true and dwelling it, but in addition giving it up. Sentimentality is usually ladled out, together with clichés. And Bobby, whose sole persona trait seems to be “good man,” carries greater than his share of each — he hears the fateful siren name “one final present” and lugs emotional baggage associated to his “previous man.” At least Cott gives Bobby a laid-back charm that’s not in contrast to Lewis’s personal, alongside along with his emotional large Act II aria, “The Only One.”
Fortunately, there’s additionally sufficient good-natured goofball humor to maintain Gordon Greenberg’s manufacturing from sinking into cloying goo. Much of the levity comes from amusing supporting characters, beginning with Bobby’s love curiosity and his boss’s daughter, Cassandra (McKenzie Kurtz, a latest Glinda in “Wicked”). She is an uber-dork with a keenness for spreadsheets, and Kurtz’s Cassandra is a daffy delight that recollects Annaleigh Ashford’s performance in “Kinky Boots.”
That just isn’t the one time “The Heart of Rock and Roll” brings to thoughts that hit, which can also be set at a manufacturing unit. Like Jerry Mitchell’s within the earlier present, Lorin Latarro’s high-energy choreography right here makes intelligent use of props, having staff slide on cardboard sheets and deploying the ensemble in a quantity that entails leaping on Bubble Wrap.
That scene takes place at a packaging conference, the place Stone Inc. is attempting to drum up enterprise. For obscure causes, the corporate’s wise head of H.R., Roz (a splendidly droll Tamika Lawrence), has tagged alongside. She, too, needed to make a life-changing determination as soon as — “and it’s an excellent factor,” Roz dryly quips, “as a result of in any other case I by no means would have discovered the unbridled pleasure of ‘human assets.’” (This units up one of the best plot twist, which comes on the very finish.)
Naturally, good Midwesterners want a depraved antagonist, ideally of the putting-on-airs sort (an enormous no-no within the Huey Lewis universe). And right here the present over-delivers due to the loose-limbed physical-comedy ace Billy Harrigan Tighe and his memorable efficiency as Tucker, Cassandra’s cocky finance-bro ex. In the quantity “Give Me the Keys (And I’ll Drive You Crazy),” he and his previous Princeton a cappella group, the Undertones, invite Cassandra for a trip in a fake automotive. The second when Kurtz mimes opening the door and Tighe mimes rolling down the window is a powerful contender for single funniest scene of the Broadway spring.
While the dialogue has occasional pop, it’s the performances that preserve the present rolling, together with Greenberg and Latarro’s fast-paced, resourceful staging. Bobby’s “I Want a New Drug,” for instance, is a cheap abstract of why many males be a part of rock bands: In his resort room on the conference, simply as he pulls out his beloved guitar, dealing with it like a holy relic, three girls magically emerge from contained in the mattress — in a nifty contact, their outfits are stylized representations of Bobby’s axe. (The costumes are by Jen Caprio.)
“The Heart of Rock and Roll” just isn’t going to be the topic of suppose items and graduate theses, however its easygoing good spirits are bolstered by stable craftsmanship, and it’d be foolish to show up our noses at that. “Have an excellent time,” Huey Lewis as soon as sang, correctly quoting Curtis Mayfield. “’Cause it’s all proper.”
The Heart of Rock and Roll
At the James Earl Jones Theater, Manhattan; heartofrocknrollbway.com. Running time: 2 hours half-hour.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com