Boop! Broadway review – Betty Boop is brought to life on the New York stage

We’ve never needed escapist theatre more than we do right now. So far this season, Broadway has done a pretty good job of providing it with musicals like the hilarious Death Becomes Her and the quirky Maybe Happy Ending. I’m happy to say that there’s now another diverting show in New York that let me forget about my 401(k) for two-and-a-half hours and had me boop-oop-a-dooping out the door.

That musical is Boop!, a bright, colorful extravaganza of nostalgic comedy, charming songs, and high-stepping choreography at the Broadhurst Theatre. Book writer Bob Martin teamed up with David Foster (music) and Susan Birkenhead (lyrics) to bring Betty Boop, Max Fleischer’s iconic cartoon character, out of her black-and-white past and into the kaleidoscopic chaos of the present. With a zippy score, terrific tap numbers choreographed by director Jerry Mitchell, energetic performances from a top-notch cast, and a plot that doesn’t tax your brain, Boop! is one of the feel-good musicals of the year.

Like the rest of us, Betty Boop (Jasmine Amy Rogers) needs to get away from it all. She’s exhausted by the stress of fame and tired of being chased around desks for a laugh. Eccentric Grampy (a hysterical Stephen DeRosa) has invented a machine that can transport cartoon characters to the real world. Betty hops in the contraption and appropriately enough lands smack dab in the middle of Comic Con where she meets Betty Boop stan Trisha (17-year-old Angelica Hale from America’s Got Talent) and her dreamy, blue-eyed guardian Dwayne (Ainsley Melham). Like a cartoon frying pan to the head, one look at Dwayne and Betty falls boing! in love.

Things start falling apart in Betty’s world without her around though, so Grampy teleports to bring her home (her scene-stealing pet dog Pudgy, operated by marionette master Phillip Huber, misses her something awful). While in New York, Grampy runs into his old flame, Valentina (Faith Prince), a scientist he met 40 years ago, and they rekindle their romance. But Betty has her own flame to tend to while taking down a corrupt mayoral candidate (Erich Bergen) and helping Trisha’s Aunt Carol (Anastacia McCleskey) get elected instead. Can a good-hearted cartoon character change the world for the better without losing the world she came from?

Of course she can, just as she’s been doing for nearly 100 years. The original Betty Boop was a coquettish flapper type with long legs, pouty lips, and a cherubic head a few sizes too large for her body (wig and hair designer Sabana Majeed has provided the requisite curls here). Rogers, however, tones down Betty’s flirtatiousness (Boop! is about as family-friendly as you can get), adopting a more feminist persona that stays sexy but knows where to draw the line with male, chauvinist creeps. Don’t get handsy, cuz this Boop will bop you.

Martin’s book is like a long cartoon episode itself, and without a realistic plot to get hung up on, director Mitchell hits the comedic high notes extra hard and pairs them with some old-fashioned Broadway razzle-dazzle. “A Little Versatility” blows us away at the top of the show with Rogers channeling Betty’s innocent allure as the ensemble (dressed in gray-shaded costumes by Gregg Barnes) busts out an amazing tap number. Then the stage bursts with a Wizard-of-Oz-esque colour change when Betty lands in the present (Philip S Rosenberg’s prismatic lighting and David Rockwell’s extraordinary set of cartoonish monochrome clearly distinguish the two worlds).

Under conductor Rick Fox’s baton, the orchestra sounds terrific, and Gareth Owens’s sound design lets us hear every note and lyric in songs like “I Speak Jazz,” energetically sung by Melham, and “Portrait of Betty,” Hale’s voice struggling a little but ultimately sticking the landing. No one does any big belting here, but who cares when you have a big juicy ensemble number like “My New York” serving up a big wet kiss to the Big Apple, and an act one closer, “Where I Wanna Be,” that nearly blows the roof off the Broadhurst.

Act two opens with one of the most theatrically eye-popping numbers you’ll ever see onstage, with the ensemble showcasing Barnes’s double-sided costumes, Finn Ross’s extraordinary projections, and Mitchell’s choreo in the tour-de-force spectacle of “Where Is Betty?” Elsewhere the rest of the cast get their chances to shine. Prince, an icon in her own right, charms the socks off us in her duet with DeRosa, “Whatever It Takes,” and Melham tears up the stage in “She Knocks Me Out.” Bergen steals the scene in “Take It to the Next Level” with his impeccable comic timing, and Rogers gets an impressive solo moment in the 11 o’clock number “Something to Shout About.” But Betty and Dwayne’s duet “Why Look Around the Corner,” with its optimistic earworm of a chorus, is the song you’ll end up humming out the door.

Betty Boop has undergone transformations since her first appearance in the 1930s (oddly enough, she was originally drawn as an anthropomorphic dog). Her sexiness was censored during that turbulent decade, but that didn’t stop her from going on to become one of the most popular cartoon characters ever. Boop! is a testament to the joy that Fleischer’s creation has given us over the years, and just as she helped get folks through hard times before, she’s ready to do it again now. Boop-oop-a-doop.