Courtesy of Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
The primary movie iterations of 1930 cartoon star Betty Boop enter the general public area in the US in January 2026. So, the rights holders to Betty Boop are definitely slicing issues right down to the wire this season with the large Broadway debut of BOOP! The Musical on the Broadhurst Theatre.
BOOP! The Musical arrives in New York after a late 2023 tryout at Chicago’s CIBC Theatre. I caught BOOP! The Musical alone dime throughout its Windy Metropolis preview interval, so I used to be curious to see what adjustments had gone in for Broadway.
Now, the flapper-inspired Betty Boop is certainly one of the crucial enduring characters dreamed up by the artistic animators of Fleischer Studios. Based in New York in 1929 by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, their namesake studio additionally produced animated shorts starring Popeye the Sailor, Koko the Clown, and even Superman. Fleischer Studios additionally launched the world’s second full-length animated characteristic in 1939 with Gulliver’s Travels, following Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.
The large-hearted and big-headed Betty Boop was at all times industrious and arguably proto-femminist as she took on a variety of careers in her animated shorts. Along with her distinctive Kewpie-doll voice by Mae Questel (Humorous Lady, New York Tales), Betty Boop additionally sang rather a lot. She alternately labored as a world star entertainer (touring from New York to Tokyo in 1935’s “A Language All My Personal”) or simply sang ditties whereas strolling on her method to work (like in “Decide for a Day,” a 1935 brief that ends with a push for Boop and different girls to hunt elected workplace).
So, the thought of a Betty Boop musical is just not so uncommon. In actual fact, it has been kicking round for many years with a variety of playwrights and songwriters connected.
For instance, composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Final 5 Years) sarcastically revealed in a 2009 weblog publish with two track demos that he and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Gap, Kimberly Akimbo) have been as soon as connected in 2002 to [show about cartoon character whose name is redacted on advice of counsel].
The writing workforce that finally realized BOOP! The Musical is definitely a starry one. Tony Award-winner Bob Martin (co-author and star of The Drowsy Chaperone) delivers a e-book that is filled with zingers and laughs. And first-time Broadway composer and 16-time Grammy Award profitable songwriter/arranger/producer David Foster (Earth Wind and Hearth’s “After the Love Has Gone,” Chicago’s “Arduous Behavior to Break”) has teamed with veteran theater lyricist Susan Birkenhead (Jelly’s Final Jam, The Secret Lifetime of Bees) on the peppy and catchy rating to BOOP!
The manufacturing workforce for BOOP! The Musical even have an arsenal of earlier Tony Awards, save for lighting designer Philip S. Rosenberg whose previous London, Broadway and regional credit are nothing to smell at.
There’s many manufacturing numbers in BOOP! The Musical that wow because of the savvy panache of veteranBroadway director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde). Mitchell is a constant professional at staging exuberant musical numbers, from the tap-happy opener “A Little Versatility” that establishes the film-star charisma and multifaceted abilities of Betty Boop, to the intense, happy-ending finale “The Shade of Love.”
Courtesy of Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
The designers David Rockwell (units), Finn Ross (projections) and Gregg Barnes (costumes) all have a subject day in depicting BOOP! The Musical’s two distinct worlds. There’s the black-and-white cartoon realm the place Betty Boop reigns supreme, plus the actual (if very idealized) world of New York the place she will get transported to in 2025.
The brand new Broadway Act II opener “The place is Betty?” is especially intelligent. Its conceit has the complete ensemble flipping between the musical’s two totally different worlds with only a back-to-front flip with costumes which can be one half grey scale on one facet and colourful neon on the opposite. (One thing should have been within the artistic ether, since this costuming trick is contemporaneously deployed in movie director Spike Jonze’s practically six-minute Apple AirPods advert starring Pedro Pascal.)
One can’t actually fault any of the technical or staging dazzle on show in BOOP! The Musical. However you’ll be able to query choose parts of the script, rating and even the entire enterprise of a present devoted to a shapely cartoon sexpot whose top of movie fame dates again to the Nice Despair.
In spite of everything, I personally hadn’t given a lot thought to Betty Boop past her pleasurable has-been cameo in Touchstone Photos and Amblin Leisure’s 1988 blockbuster movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or her transient Nineteen Eighties syndicated newspaper cartoon comeback alongside Felix the Cat. And just like the disembodied head of Hiya Kitty, Betty Boop has equally adorned all types of style equipment focused at younger girls for many years.
However the writing and artistic workforce of BOOP! The Musical clearly did their homework in serving up a rethink on why Betty Boop ought to nonetheless stay related at this time. Should you re-watch Betty Boop shorts on YouTube, you’ll see a great deal of progressive escapism by her never-ending optimism and gumption to succeed whereas navigating by financially scary occasions and an never-ending rogues gallery of leering males. So, one can definitely see up to date parallels amid Betty Boop’s massive Broadway reappearance.
BOOP! The Musical begins like a Fleischer Studios animated brief with the title “Betty’s Day Off.” What follows is a fish-out-of-water state of affairs just like the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted.
Courtesy of Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
Exhausted from a full day of non-union-regulated movie work, Betty Boop (a star-making Broadway debut for the spunky Jasmine Amy Rogers) can be thrown into an existential disaster following a probing reporter’s query. So, Betty Boop makes a questionable resolution to check out a time-traveling system cooked up by her Rube Goldberg inventor-type Grampy (a spacey Stephen DeRosa) for a well-deserved time without work.
Fortunately, Betty Boop is transported to the most secure potential place in 2025 Manhattan: New York Comedian Con on the Javits Conference Heart. There, Boop marvels at experiencing all hues of the rainbow for the primary time amid all of the character cos-players within the enjoyable manufacturing quantity “In Shade.”
She additionally fatefully encounters two people at Comedian Con who initially assume that she’s one of the best Betty Boop cos-player they’ve ever seen. There’s the blue-eyed jazz-aficionado love curiosity Dwayne (a hunky Ansley Melham) who’s the sort-of older brother to the orphaned Betty Boop tremendous fan Trisha (America’s Obtained Expertise alumna Angelica Hale).
Boop then will get pulled into the orbit of Trisha’s guardian, Carol Evans (Anastacia McCleskey), who’s the marketing campaign supervisor for the shady New York mayoral candidate Raymond Demarest (Erich Bergen of Madame Secretary and Jersey Boys fame). As soon as Boop’s true id is revealed, the smarmy Demarest is keen to use her cartoon celeb.
In the meantime, people again within the cartoon world just like the movie director Oscar Delacorte (Aubie Merrylees), his studio flunky Clarence (Ricky Schroeder) and Boop’s lovely canine Pudgy (ingenious Being John Malkovich puppeteer Phillip Huber) all begin to panic about their star’s disappearance. So, Grampy seeks the assistance of his former human love curiosity, Valentina (underutilized Guys and Dolls Tony Award winner Religion Prince), to search out Boop and produce her again dwelling.
Courtesy of Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
Now, I personally would have favored Martin’s typically meandering script to have extra focus and elevated plot stakes with a ticking time constraint for Boop’s previous cartoon world disappearance presumably affecting her future existence and legacy (assume Again to the Future). I additionally felt that some musical numbers by Foster and Birkenhead (just like the Instances Sq.-set “My New York” and the rousing jazz membership Act I nearer “The place I Wanna Be”) performed nearly like adverts for NYC Tourism + Conventions.
However for probably the most half, I glad to expertise a much-improved BOOP! The Musical from its earlier Chicago tryout with a number of track replacements and revisions for Broadway. For instance, Trisha’s track “Portrait of Betty,” a paean extolling the explanations for her worship of Betty Boop, appeared to have extra particular examples of the cartoon star’s inspirational exploits from her animated shorts than earlier than.
BOOP! The Musical is certainly full of loads of colourful glitz, glamour, and expertise with an empowering message for people to search out their interior confidence to succeed and lead. Although you would cynically attempt to write it off as a last-gasp money seize earlier than simply anybody can have their method with Betty Boop within the public area, BOOP! The Musicalwell features as an formally sanctioned summation and splashy reexamination of Betty Boop’s practically century-long popular culture profession.
