Theater review
BOOP
Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street.
She may be playing a two-dimensional character, but she’s one heck of a triple threat.
That’s Jasmine Amy Rogers, the 25-year-old actress who’s making a marvelous Broadway debut in “Boop,” the musical comedy at the Broadhurst Theatre.
How refreshing to see, during this depressing season marred by A-list celebrities underdelivering for big bucks, a bona fide new stage star hoofing and belting with the best of ‘em.
Most impressively for the newcomer, she’s handed the tricky task of bringing to life a silly and largely irrelevant cultural icon — the 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop — and turning the flirty Jazz Age creation into a relatable human.
Rogers does just that, with a wink, sublime voice and an infectious spirit.
“Boop,” a fun if not fantastic musical with a fizzy score by David Foster and Susan Birkenhead, gives Betty the “Elf” and “Barbie” treatment by tossing the talking trademark into the harsh real world.
Itching to escape her black-and-white, simple existence with Pudgy the dog in a home that looks like a monochrome “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” the curly singer and movie starlet uses one of wacky Grampy’s (Stephen DeRosa) inventions to travel to 2025 Manhattan.
When she lands, amusingly at Comic Con at the Javits Center, she goes from Kansas to Oz. Bright pops of color dance around the stage and Betty meets a different type of larger-than-life person in the five boroughs.
New York, Betty observes, “looks like a cartoon.”
She soon falls for a trumpeter named Dwayne (the silky-voiced charmer Ainsey Melham whose tunes have a hint of Michael Buble) and helps his precocious kid sister Trisha (Angelica Hale) find confidence.
Once NY1 reporters realize Betty Boop has miraculously come to life — the show is very aware of its own ridiculousness and plays it up — she unexpectedly lands a crucial role in the mayoral election.
“Boop”’s plot, like its title, is monosyllabic. A to Boop. The basic and predictable book from writer Bob Martin is surely a nod to her short films, such as “Betty Boop, MD,” or “Betty Boop’s Big Boss.”
Don’t come looking for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Boop?” And why would you?
I didn’t always care where the story was going. For instance, Grampy and Valentina, his astrophysicist ex-girlfriend played by Faith Prince, serve up underwhelming comic relief in a musical that’s already all comic relief.
And the second half occasionally meanders as complexities arise.
But because of the decent one-liners, pleasant enough songs and ample flashy dance numbers — not many of those on Broadway anymore — I mostly enjoyed the bump-free ride to a happy ending.
The material gets a boop-boop-a-boost from some magical moments of stagecraft by director Jerry Mitchell.
At the top of Act 2, he manages maybe his best trick since the treadmill feat in “Kinky Boots” by using costumes and sharp choreography to cleverly hop between the cartoon and flesh-and-blood worlds. Old-school tactile dazzle.
However, the show’s biggest challenge exists off-stage: Making Betty Boop a draw 95 years after she debuted. At this point, the icon isn’t really nostalgic to anyone or at the top of anybody’s mind. Whatever you may feel about the big-eyed flapper, the attraction today is not the title, but Rogers.
She can do it all. As smiley, effervescent and, well, animated as the actress is for most of the night, she finds power and emotional resonance in her 11 o’clock number “Something To Shout About.”
After that stunner, it’s easy — and a pleasure — to imagine Rogers playing any number of parts in the future.
And there’s nothing wrong with an animated character in a brainless musical being your first splash.
Who won a Tony for her performance as Sally in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” 26 years ago? That’d be Kristin Chenoweth.
There’s such a throwback showbiz energy to discovering a major talent like Rogers that makes the marquee lights twinkle a bit brighter as you boop out of the theater and off to Sardi’s.
