‘Schmigadoon!’ Broadway Review: Musical With Enough Corn Puddin’ For All

Titaníque is more outlandish (and funnier), Something Rotten! was sharper (and funnier) and Smash, well, Smash was none of those. Taking a comfortable, crowd-satisfying spot somewhere in the middle of recent (or recentish) stage musicals that mock stage musicals (and Titaníque qualifies for its ad-lib Just In Time or Two Strangers excursions), Schmigadoon!, based on the first season of the Apple Original series, is a bright, pleasant diversion from whatever real world villainy is bedeviling you at the moment.

Though in choosing its mass-appeal musical theater punchlines Schmigadoon! typically demands little more knowledge than things we might have learned on Glee or seen in the odd Simpsons episode, the Cinco Paul musical has enough “if you know you know” moments to tickle the theater die-hards. If you know the fate of any lustful carny hunk who can bust a ballet move at a moment’s notice, Schmigadoon! will charm.

If you’ve not seen the 2021-2023 series, the premise is this: A young man and woman, both doctors (Alex Brightman and Sarah Chase), meet cute near the hospital vending machine, marry and within a few years are bickering and giving more attention to their smart phones than to one another (this is all conveyed, via time jumps, on stage in just minutes, cleverly).

During a walk through the woods at a marriage retreat, Josh and Melissa cross a fairy-tale-looking bridge and find themselves in a land of nostalgically painted flats suggesting an over-the-rainbow land of Music Man Americana, Brigadoon enchantment and the carnival enticements of Carousel. Much to the consternation of the musical-hating Josh (he even loathes Singin’ In The Rain, despite Melissa’s best case-making) the couple have found themselves smack-dab in the middle of just such a wonderland.

In short order Josh, Melissa and the audience meet quaintly attired townsfolk who by way of introduction break into the local theme song “Schmigadoon!,” sounding just this side of litigation like the title song from Oklahoma. A cute little boy with a lisp isn’t named Winthrop but he might as well be. A good-looking ne’er-do-well carnival worker named Danny Bailey sets about wooing Melissa in his best Billy Bigelow fashion, and local gal Betsy (McKenzie Kurtz), an Ado Annie by way of Dogpatch, has her eyes on Josh. If nothing else, she’ll win him over with her delicious corn puddin’ (and yes, Schmigadoon! is fully aware of any and all double entendres – single ones too for that matter).

Just as the various townsfolk characters are clearly modeled on those that trod the musical boards back in Broadway‘s Golden Age, so too does the score owe its debts. Composer Paul has concocted a pastiche of songs forever on the edge of our memories if not our tongues. Some of the show’s musical numbers are closer to their source material than others – Danny’s “You Done Tamed Me” references Billy Bigelow’s “Soliloquy” from Carousel, “Tribulation” is a tongue-twister patter song modeled on “You Got Trouble” from The Music Man (performed in Schmigadoon! by a scene stealing Ana Gasteyer as the villainous, book-burning pastor’s wife), and, perhaps with the least amount of disguise, “Baby Talk” uses Sound of Music‘s childlike “Do-Re-Mi” for an explicit biology lesson on where babies come from.

If you watched the TV series, you’ll recognize some of these moments – along with others such as the fan-favorite celebration of “Corn Puddin!” – but what you might miss is the inherent strangeness of seeing these fantasy worlds displayed within the hyper-real confines of a television screen. On stage, Josh and Melissa, our wanderers from the land of reality, are subsumed into an actual musical rather than a vaguely Truman Show-style refraction. Something’s lost in the translation, but with dazzling costumes, hyper-energetic singing and dancing and joyful spirit filling the Nederlander, quibbles end up banished beyond the flats.

The cast, under Christopher Gattelli’s spirit-matching direction and choreography, seem to be having the time of their lives, and why not? Gasteyer’s comic chops have diminished not an iota since her long-ago SNL days, and her uptight Elmira Gulch prickliness is as flawless as her “Trouble in River City,” I mean, “Tribulation in Schmigadoon” delivery. If Cinco Paul ever gets around to a stage sequel advancing his Broadway timeline, Gasteyer needs “Last Midnight” like Mandy Patinkin needed to finish that damn hat.

All have their moments: Chase, Harada, Ivan Hernandez (as the town Doc with all the bedside manner of Captain Von Trapp), Brad Oscar as closeted Mayor Menlove whose penchant for outfits as fanciful as any thing from Munchkinland is matched only by his tender longing for that shy town reverend (Maulik Pancholy).

Only the usually high-spirited Alex Brightman seems lacking in purpose here. Playing the no-nonsense musical-hating science guy leaves the expansive star of Beetlejuice, School of Rock and Spamalot with too few enjoyments to share, too few moments of comic stage business, and certainly not enough songs to belt. Brightman’s Josh, as often as not, is merely left to grouse something along the lines of “kill me now” when all around him are plunging headfirst into the joyous, endorphin-exploding pleasures of song, dance and facial expressions contorted with musical theater bliss. Poor guy. Someone book him on the Titaníque, stat.

Title: Schmigadoon!
Venue: Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre
Director: Christopher Gattelli
Book & Music: Cinco Paul (based on the Apple Original series co-created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio)
Cast: Alex Brightman, Sara Chase, Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada, Brad Oscar, Isabelle McCalla, Ivan Hernandez, Maulik Pancholy, Max Clayton, McKenzie Kurtz, Ayaan Diop
Running time: 2 hrs 30 min (including intermission)