Latest news with #Boop!'
New York Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
'Boop,' 'Smash,' fuming Tony Awards 2025 won't let them perform
Usually, the week before the Tony Awards is a joyful time to celebrate the wonderful work of the Broadway season. Not this year! Two big shows were fuming Tuesday that they're being left out of the Tony Awards broadcast on CBS Sunday night: 'Boop! The Betty Boop Musical' and 'Smash.' 5 'Smash,' starring Robyn Hurder, was one Broadway show that the Tony Awards is not letting perform on Sunday night's broadcast. Matthew Murphy The Post can confirm that both productions asked to perform, were willing to pay the $300,000 or so that an appearance costs and were told 'Nope!' by the Tonys' producers. Of course, there is no guarantee any show that was not nominated for Best Musical or Best Musical Revival will get to sing and hoof on the telecast. Neither 'Smash' nor 'Boop!' are in contention for the big kahuna. However, the same is true of two productions that will get highly valuable minutes onstage at Radio City Music Hall: 'Just in Time,' the sold-out Bobby Darin dazzler starring Jonathan Groff, and the struggling 'Real Women Have Curves.' 'It's bizarre,' said one Broadway producer. And it's a pretty catty move. And I'm not talking about Mr. Mistoffelees. Only three currently running musicals were given the brush by the televised ceremony: 'Boop!,' 'Real Women' and 'The Last Five Years' starring Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren. 'Last Five Years' got squat on nominations morning, so they don't have a case for crooning Jason Robert Brown's mopey songs. 5 Despite receiving four nominations, 'Boop!' is not performing on the Tonys, while 'Real Women Have Curves,' with two, is. Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman But what's weird is that 'Boop!,' with four nominations — including Best Actress in a Musical for its incredible breakout star Jasmine Amy Rogers — has more nods than 'Real Women,' which notched just two. And yet the real women got a slot. The Post has reached out to representatives for the Tonys for an explanation. At the Broadhurst Theatre, everybody is Boop-ing furious. 'Why wouldn't the Tonys want a highly telegenic number from 'Boop'!?,' said a member of Team 'Boop!.' 5 'Boop!' planned to perform the songs 'Where's Betty?' and 'Something to Shout About.' Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman The show had planned to perform the impressive dance number 'Where's Betty?,' which showcases director Jerry Mitchell's choreography and Gregg Barnes' clever costumes. That would then segue into the 11 O'Clock solo 'Something to Shout About' from Rogers, who's so far won the Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Best Actress. She's in a tough Tony race with Nicole Scherzinger ('Sunset Boulevard') and Audra McDonald ('Gypsy'), but I've spoken to plenty of Rogers voters. Considering the Tonys begin at 6:30 p.m. on the app Pluto — which I download once a year like a TV Brigadoon — and continue through 11 p.m. on CBS (four and a half hours!), five minutes would go by quicker than you can say 'Boop!' 5 'Just in Time,' which was not nominated for Best Musical, will perform on the broadcast. Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman The slight has given fans something to shout about. 'What's been amazing and eye-opening has been the public response,' a moved 'Boop!' cast member said. 'When the Tonys announced which shows are performing, 90% of the comments were outcries about 'Boop''s glaring omission. In fact, there is a fan-created petition circling around to include Jasmine in some capacity. The petition has over 100 signatures in the first hour!' At time of publication, that petition had secured more than 800 names. 5 The slight is like something out of 'Smash.' Matthew Murphy Over at the Imperial, 'Smash,' the Susan Stroman-directed musical based on the canceled NBC TV series about Broadway backstabbing, has been quieter. But I'm told they also feel like smashing some things. Actually, the Tonys' totally predictable, self-made mess is a plot-line straight outta 'Smash'!
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Boop!' Broadway Review: First Barbie, Now Betty Gets Dragged Into the 21 Century
You've won 16 Grammy Awards and now want to write your first Broadway musical. What source material do you pick? There are so many great novels, movies, straight plays and TV shows out there to choose from. David Foster, the composer of such hit songs as 'I Will Always Love You' and 'The Power of Love,' chose a cartoon character born in the Great Depression. You might remember Betty Boop if you're really old. She's the curvaceous icon from the 1930s that gave little boys boners before they knew what sex was all about. 'Boop!' is the new musical by Foster that opened Monday at the Broadhurst Theatre. It's 'boop-oop-a-doop' for a show that needs a good spritz of Pooph. If you're too young to know about Betty Boop, you will have seen movies that tell this basic story much better. In 'Barbie,' the Barbie and Ken dolls are transported to the real world where she becomes a feminist and he becomes a male chauvinistic pig. In 'Pleasantville,' a 'Father Knows Best' family is transported to the real world when they discover sex. In 'The Brady Bunch Movie,' the famous TV family walks out the front door to be transported into the real world of violence and corruption. When Betty Boop leaves her 1930s cartoon world in 'Boop!,' she's transported (don't ask how) to a Comic Con convention in New York City where she discovers … color. She also discovers some of the ugliest costumes, by Gregg Barnes, that have ever graced a Broadway stage. After singing 'In Color,' Betty makes friends and falls in love immediately with a man (Ainsley Melham, being oddly remote) not in comic book drag. Betty greases her way into the future, as well as the real world, as if she had just bathed in Vaseline. There's no conflict. She just spreads her joy to a city that appears to be doing fine without her. Foster and lyricist Susan Birkenhead load 'Boop!' with so many anthems they appear to be auditioning for some new 'I Love NY' ad campaign. As for Foster's tunes, you will leave the Broadhurst humming them, because you've heard them all before, whether it is caterwauling gospel or anemic jazz or the ubiquitous female power ballad. It is questionable whether anyone involved with this musical ever watched a Betty Boop cartoon. Birkenhead's lyrics describe the newly neutered character on stage: 'She is strong, she is smart, open mind, open heart' … and later, 'She has spunk, she has spine, she's a saint.' Sorry, Betty Boop was one hot number. Where's the part about her being a great lay? That's why all those barnyard critters were chasing her around the hayloft. No less an entity than the Hays Office censored Betty Boop back in 1935, making her a far more demure and less sexy character. 'Boop!' has clearly taken its orders from a Depression-era right-wing censor. Playing Betty, Jasmine Amy Rogers isn't given much to do other than squeal cutely. There's a reason for her new blandness, and that's because Betty, like Barbie before her, is now a feminist. As Bob Martin's meandering and relentlessly unfunny book does manage to make evident, the cartoon character is known for hitting other cartoon characters over the head with all sorts of lethal objects. No problem. They're cartoons. On stage, it's a different story. One of the musical's subplots involves a blowhard who's running to be mayor of New York. This politician makes an odd brief appearance in Act 1, but gets much more stage time when Betty joins his campaign in Act 2. Spreading her usual cheer, she gives the guy a lot of good press. Playing that creep, Erich Bergen singlehandedly turns 'Boop!' into something worth watching after nearly two hours of total tedium. Because he's stealing her show, Betty hits him over the head with a desk lamp. He's knocked out cold and never recovers, only to be rolled off stage in an office chair. This is feminism? When a man clobbers a woman into unconsciousness, even on the stage, he goes to jail. In 'Boop!,' he's the one who ends up in an orange jump suit for the curtain call. Jerry Mitchell directs and choreographs. I thought the song 'In Color, set at the Comic Con convention and populated with Marvel-like icons, was this theater season's worst staged musical number. But no, that comes just ahead of intermission when Betty visits Times Square to meet other cartoon icons there. It's difficult to say what's more embarrassing: the people in Disney outfits out on the street or the chorus at the Broadhurst in costumes that look just as seedy and smelly. Pooph, anyone? The post 'Boop!' Broadway Review: First Barbie, Now Betty Gets Dragged Into the 21 Century appeared first on TheWrap.
Chicago Tribune
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Boop! The Musical' opens on Broadway as a retro song-and-dance celebration of the cartoon
NEW YORK — Ignore the cynics and their interest in intimidating ironic innovation! With the market tanking and worry exploding all around, affordable escapism soon will be having a boffo moment at the Broadway box office. Enter at the Broadhurst Theatre a joyous, retro, family-friendly charmer for a discombobulated world. Director Jerry Mitchell's sing-and-smile-along production of 'Boop! The Musical' is like gulping a glass of fizzy sangria after a rough day, heck, after a rough three months and counting of stress and strife. What's not to love about Betty Boop, U.S.-based international ambassador? It's a rhetorical question, folks. She cannot be fired. Vastly improved from its Chicago tryout — Mitchell being a master of the dogged retrofit — 'Boop!' is now a stellar little showcase for its ascendant young star, Jasmine Amy Rogers, who does not let playing a literal cartoon character get in the way of a fully fleshed out performance, as sweet and vulnerable as it is determined and resolute. Still in her mid-20s, Rogers might not yet be a match for Broadway's biggest divas. But she sings and dances her alter ego's oversized head off, fully at ease with David Foster's lush and muscular score and Susan Birkenhead's amusing lyrics. More importantly, she fully understands what it means to play a character who has spent the last century or so hanging on in the face of formidable Disney competition. She might have played Snow White before Rachel Zegler and shown her chops as a lion tamer, but Betty Boop had to emerge from Max Fleischer film shorts, not Uncle Walt's theme parks. She had to stay relevant all these years through her own sex appeal, not decades of marketing campaigns. And she somehow has stuck around the zeitgeist even though she mostly spent her previous screen time running away from aggressive men. Deftly ignoring the little matter of her being a line-drawn cartoon, Bob Martin, the show's book writer, picks up on the idea that Betty must have become sick of those same vampish plot points, and forges a show wherein Ms. Boop undergoes a kind of early midlife crisis and craves a vacation. Thus she exits her black-and-white world via a time machine crafted by sidekick Grampy (Stephen DeRosa) and ends up, of all places, at the Javits Center in the middle of New York Comic Con, where she quickly sees that she enjoys a certain immortality. Apparently, seen-it-all New Yorkers have no issue with a 100-year-old cartoon icon coming to life before their eyes. Thus Betty's New York adventures then include falling in love with Dwayne (Ainsley Melham), acting as a surrogate mom to the spunky teenage Betty fan Trisha (Angelica Hale, another delightful Mitchell discovery) and maybe even steering New York away from the wrong ascendent mayoral candidate (Erich Bergen) by persuading Trisha's mom Carol (Anastacia McCleskey) to run for mayor herself. All in a day's work, even as Grampy is distracted by his relationship with Valentina, another of the musical's actual Boop characters, now played in a cameo by the veteran musical-comedy star Faith Prince, a piece of casting that centers this show familiar within long-standing and thus comforting Broadway traditions. Mitchell figured out that it says Betty Boop on the marquee and he excised a hefty chunk of the old Chicago caper plot in favor of giving as much stage time to Rogers as possible. Excellent choice. Audiences eat her up, as they do Hale's Trisha and the puppet pooch Pudgy, as wrangled by Phillip Huber. Like everyone else, the dog starts out in black and white, only for his schlerping tongue to gain some technicolor. Jasmine Amy Rogers (as Betty Boop) and Ainsley Melham (Dwayne) in "Boop! The Musical" on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York. (Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) The big Act 1 closer is a stellar Foster production number, 'Where I Wanna Be,' a fine showcase for this dance-forward show. Along with 'Why Look Around the Corner,' a ball-bouncing singalong, that's the anchor of Foster's score, a populist, filmic and romantically orchestrated song suite that only has one relative misfire, the eleven o'clock number, 'Something to Shout About.' 'Where I Wanna Be' is actually an apt descriptor of the entire show: a confident mid-range musical when it comes to size and spectacle, an unabashedly family- and visitor-friendly attraction and an old-school romantic comedy. If it finds its intended international audience, the cameras will keep whirring on Betty. The show also functions very much as a love letter to that devil's playground called Times Square, where Betty finds characters that look like her but have even bigger noggins. They function as their own executioners, too. She finds that strange. As do we all. Self-evidently, one has to overlook some illogicalities here, but Rogers makes that easy. The set designer David Rockwell and costume designer Gregg Barnes both have a lot of fun with the assignment but they also keep things disciplined. Shows like this often fall off the tracks when they reach too far, keep breaking their own rules or let spectacle steal humanity. Here, Betty does not allow any of that to happen. Thus 'Boop!' builds and communicates its own optimistic world, inhabits it fully and makes no apology to anyone. No 'Boop-Oop-a-Doop' is necessary.
