Just in Time
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Cititour.com Review
Without question, there are few more thrilling words an audience can hear these days than “Ladies and gentlemen, please, put your hands together and welcome to the stage... Jonathan Groff!”
Still, this phrase momentarily causes some confusion as we are sitting in Circle in the Square, which had been redecorated by the great Derek McLane as a swanky nightclub. Have we come just to see Groff do a cabaret act? Or are we there to watch, as advertised, “Just in Time,” a new bio-musical celebrating the life of Bobby Darin, the award-winning singer and actor who died at age 37 in 1973 (long before Groff or most of his fans were born)?
As it happens, the real answer is the latter. Still, it was very smart of whoever, whether it be Groff, director and developer Alex Timbers or book writers Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, to let the recent Tony Award-winning star come out as himself. First, he dazzles us with a brilliant medley of “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” and “Just in Time” – sounding like himself and not Darin (as will be true throughout the evening) -- and then explains how he became fascinated with Darin through listening to his parent’s records while growing up in Pennsylvania. It’s a clever way into a story that, to be honest, doesn’t cry out for re-telling.
Admittedly, many of us will learn through the next two-and-half hours – with Groff giving us 1,000 percent of his energy, charisma and vocal and acting talent – that Darin’s life had numerous challenges, not all of which he overcame. They included a variety of health issues (one of which caused his early demise), and a complicated family life: His wise-cracking “mother” Polly (a superb Michele Pawk) -- a former vaudevillian whose fondness for the French tune “La Mer” led to the creation of Darin’s megahit “Beyond the Sea” -- turned out to be his grandmother, while his mother was really overprotective older sister Nina (an excellent Emily Bergl), whose husband Charlie (a versatile Joe Barbara) ends up being Bobby’s right-hand man (but is not Bobby’s father!)
In addition, there was a hot-blooded relationship with the young singer Connie Francis (a strong-voiced Gracie Lawrence, also not doing an imitation) that was kiboshed by her father, and an impulsive, eventually troubled marriage to his film co-star Sandra Dee (a winning Erika Henningsen), who was too naïve to fully grasp how their union would evolve and then dissolve.
Above all, there was Darin’s struggle – made even more potent by the singer knowing he could die any moment – to find a musical style that suited him. Working with songwriting partner Don Kirschner (an engaging Caesar Samayoa), with whom he penned a successful furniture store jingle, Darin fails to break through while trying to sound like Elvis Presley or Fats Domino until the creation of Darin’s breakthrough novelty hit “Splish, Splash” (inventively staged here by Timbers), a result of an offhand comment by famed NYC DJ Murray the K (a very fine Lance Roberts)
Throught the show, some of the songs, including a fierce “Mack the Knife” and a riveting take on the standard “Once in a Lifetime,” are performed on stages -- backed up by Darin’s so-called sirens (played by the ultra-sexy Valeria Yamin, Christine Cornish, and Julia Grondin) – allowing Groff to really let loose in ways as a singer and dancer that we’ve never seen before. Meanwhile, other signature tunes – including “Dream Lover,” “18 Yellow Roses,” and “If I Were a Carpenter” -- are delivered just as effectively, if more diagetically.
Visually, the show is sumptuous, thanks in large part to Timbers’ many collaborators from “Moulin Rouge,” including McLane (who makes remarkable use of Circle’s three-quarter space) and Tony-winning costume designer Catherine Zuber, who proves once again that no one working on Broadway has a better grasp on how people (especially women) dressed in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the show’s raison d’etre is Groff, who could earn back-to-back Tony Awards with this tour-de-force performance, Moreover, should he ever do a cabaret show, perhaps he should borrow a page from his real-life bestie, Lea Michele, and belt out “I’m the Greatest Star.” I doubt his many fans – old and new – would disagree.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://justintimebroadway.com/
Open/Close Dates
Opening 4/26/2025
Closing Open-ended
Theatre Info
Circle in the Square
235 West 50th Street
New York, NY 10019
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