‘Schmigadoon!’ Gleefully Sends Up Broadway Classics, but Soon Runs Out of Gas

Around this time last year, the theater district welcomed one of the most inevitable screen-to-stage transfers in history: “Smash,” a Broadway musical adapted from a TV series about the making of a Broadway musical. Now it’s time for “Schmigadoon!,” drawn from the first season of another, more recent series—the second was called “Schmicago!” and featured a different setting and storyline—following a couple who find themselves trapped in a musical.The title is a reference to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s “Brigadoon,” which focused on two Americans who happen upon an enchanted Scottish village from the past that pops up for one day every 100 years. If you’ve never heard of that work, which premiered in 1947, chances are you won’t get many of the inside jokes and references that permeate “Schmigadoon!,” at once a loving homage to and a goofy parody of Golden Age musicals.The conundrum is that even if you do recognize the nods here to numerous Rodgers and Hammerstein gems, along with “The Music Man,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and other classics, delivering songs and characters that seem familiar is, however hearty the winking, hardly a recipe for sustaining a show that stretches — and I use that verb with particular emphasis—to two and a half hours, including an intermission.“Schmigadoon!” features a book, music, and lyrics by Cinco Paul, who co-created the television program with Ken Daurio, also his screenwriting partner for the duly loved “Despicable Me” franchise and other animated hits such as “The Lorax” and “Horton Hears a Who.” The stage version retains many of the original characters, prominent among them Josh Skinner and Melissa Gimble, two doctors who go on a backpacking retreat in an effort to heal their ailing relationship.Respectively played by Alex Brightman and Sara Chase, Josh and Melissa are introduced as stereotypes of women and straight men, down to their opinions on musical theater: She’s a fan; he can’t stand the whole idea. He’s also commitment-phobic, whereas she gushes over the romantic wedding their friends just had —friends who, she notes pointedly, started dating a year after they did.Upon landing in Schmigadoon, the two are greeted with a title number bearing a pronounced resemblance to the one in “Oklahoma!”: similar chord progressions, the same trilling vocal harmonies above the chorus. Other songs satirize familiar tunes just as unabashedly, and the newer ones — several were retained from the series, though new underscoring, lyrics, and reprises have also been added — are often shorter, as if Mr. Paul ran out of gas quickly after nailing down his source material; some seem like little more than musical punch lines. The plot follows suit. Josh flirts with a coquettish, giggling waitress who invites comparisons to that show’s Ado Annie and Gertie Cummings, a smaller part, while Melissa catches the eye of the rakish Danny Bailey, obviously a stand-in for Billy Bigelow, the anti-hero who finds redemption after death in “Carousel.” Variations on characters from “Music Man” turn up as another rival love interest, a villainess, and a cute kid.The performers all prove game and capable; it’s especially interesting to see Mr. Brightman, known for his boisterous performances in musical adaptations of “School of Rock” and “Beetlejuice,” play a drier dude. But the real stars of this production are director/choreographer Christopher Gattelli and his design team: Linda Cho’s candy-colored costumes can look good enough to eat, while Scott Pask’s fanciful sets and Mr. Gattelli’s athletic, exuberant routines combine old-school charm with modern ingenuity.Of course, the real draw of the vintage musicals being celebrated and lampooned in “Schmigadoon!” was always the songs, and the stories they propelled. For all its genuine affection and giddy humor, this staging only left me wistful that they don’t make them like that anymore—at least, not at the rate they used to.

‘Schmigadoon!’ Gleefully Sends Up Broadway Classics, but Soon Runs Out of Gas

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