Shocker — Broadway musical based on old flop TV show is terrible

“Let’s Be Bad” is a song from the Broadway musical “Smash.” 

It is also the production’s motto.

The total absence of taste begins before you even enter the theater, with the title emblazoned on the marquee. 

Last I checked, the NBC TV series that inspired the rancid show that opened Thursday night at the Imperial was canceled after two seasons because critics and audiences rightly abandoned it. 

To call the program culty would be generous. “Smash” is credited by some with popularizing the term “hate-watch.”

Now, twelve years later, much of the backstage drama’s creative team has doubled-down on their failure and produced something far, far worse. 

It’s hard to judge whose decisions are more misguided: those of the back-stabbing, wacky creators of “Bombshell,” the fictional musical comedy about Marilyn Monroe we see implode, or the very real minds (Robert Greenblatt, Steven Spielberg, Susan Stroman) behind the disaster that is “Smash.”

For the few who saw it on NBC — and for the even fewer who remember any details — only two characters return, and with altogether different and dumber storylines: Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder) and Karen (Caroline Bowman).

Ivy, played memorably on TV by Megan Hilty, is an established major Broadway star who is taking on the role of Marilyn in a bubbly comedy about the “Some Like It Hot” star called “Bombshell.” You know, the celeb who endured abusive relationships and tragically died of an overdose at age 36? See above: Total absence of taste.

Karen, Katharine McPhee on the tube, is her hard-working, well-liked understudy. She’s also married to the actor playing Joe DiMaggio (Casey Garvin), but that’s barely mentioned.

From there, every new idea in the book by Bob Martin should’ve been crumpled up and thrown over his shoulder.

Ivy hires a kooky acting coach named Susan (Kristine Nielsen), who dresses like Igor from “Young Frankenstein,” and feeds her pills to get her fully into character. Preposterously, Ivy starts to believe she really is Marilyn and becomes a drugged-up terror.

From the stress, Jerry (John Behlmann), one of the musical’s husband-and-wife co-writers, develops alcoholism. Three flasks fall out of his jacket. Hilarious!

The pompous director Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas, giving the same step-and-repeat performance he always does) starts creepily slobbering over a chorus boy — and in the end, the show decides that it’s very sweet.

Then, Act Two goes from dubious to nonsensical. A buildup of increasingly ludicrous complications and mockable detours makes the audience quietly question the inspiring old credo “The show must go on.”  

As does Stroman’s direction — hackneyed as ever — and, yes, the score.

“Hairspray” duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s songs from the TV series, save for the rousing “Let Me Be Your Star,” all sound like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” when performed back to back rather than over a months-long season. And they’re mostly sung in a stripped-down rehearsal room. 

The music is repetitive and unexciting, much like Joshua Bergasse’s choreography, which is neither funny nor fun.

Similarly indecisive, “Smash” is on the fence as to whether “Bombshell” is a good or bad musical. That should have been action item No. 1. 

For example, in the brilliant backstage farce “Noises Off,” the play-within-a-play, “Nothing On,” is terrible. That’s part of the joke. Same with “Springtime for Hitler” in “The Producers.”

“Bombshell,” however, comes off as, I dunno, mediocre? It’s implied that duo Jerry and his wife Tracy (Krysta Rodriguez) are flop factories who lazily rip off tunes from their old, forgotten shows, like “The Accidental Rabbi.” 

But the only reason “Smash” is on Broadway right now is because Shaiman and Wittman’s songs from the series still have admirers.  

Why, then, are the fictional composers depicted as unreliable hacks who no one seems to believe in? It makes no sense. Nothing does.

“Let Me Be Your Star” could be the production’s other motto. Every underbaked character aggressively competes for our attention: a stern producer (Jacqueline B. Arnold), a Gen Z assistant (Nicholas Matos) and an overlooked associate choreographer (Bella Coppola), among others.

The audience roots for one person for about two minutes, and then goes back to furrowing their brows.

And nothing speaks to the wreckage more than the fact that the villains are an acting teacher and TikTok.

All night, nobody — including Hurder and Bowman — stands out. They’re not allowed to. And the musical isn’t really a tight ensemble piece, either. The messy material forces the cast to blend into one banal blob, talented though they are.

“Smash” begins with Marilyn’s lyric: “Fade in on a girl.” 

By curtain call, it sounds more like, “Fade out on a show.”