When Jonathan Groff says, “I'm a wet guy,” he means that.
Entry will be near the beginning of “Just in Time,” a Bobby Dallin biomusical that opened in the plaza circle on Saturday. This is a warning to the 22 audience sitting at a cabaret table in the middle of action, where he may want to wear a raincoat as he sings, dances, sweats and spits out, sings a-splashin' and a-splashin'.
But Groff is also wet in another sense. He is a rushing pipeline, a body and voice, and appears to have evolved with a specific goal of transporting emotions from inside to outside. Unusual among male musical theatre stars, he is not only acoustically but emotionally thrilling.
And Darrin, a self-proclaimed “nightclub animal” who bounces from bopper to crooner to Quester, is perfect for him. Not because they resemble temperament, but except that they are forced to be entertained and accepted by the audience. Also, they don't look similar. Groff's voice is Darin's voice, round and healthy. But the Broadway and Brill Building songs offer some of the Darrin Suns he wrote, scale, snap, and now the birthright of Diva, offering opportunities for bravura rather than diva more often.
In other words, Groff is sensational.
It appears to be the case at first, with Alex Timbers's directed “Just In time,” along with books by Warren Late and Isaac Oliver. Certainly the opening is a great shock. Making a wise choice to introduce Groff as himself, rather than as Darin, the show quickly breaks out of the Jukebox Box and releases the song as a literal illustration. My fear that Oldies, which includes the word “heart,” had been making a shoehole in Darrin's storyline about rheumatoid fever, was temporarily suppressed.
Instead, “Just in Time” begins as a Las Vegas-style straight acid floor show, with Groff gushing the audience in a fully cut suit from Catharine Zuver and bustling between songs and patterns. Set designer Derek McClain transformed the circle's nasty ovals into a gorgeous dinner club. Silver Austrian curtains cover the walls and click on the scent of liquor on the cabaret table. The banquet surrounding the bandstand at one end of the play space, the other ministage, suggests a blank showbiz canvas with flashy gold and indigo lighting by Justin Townsend.
Certainly, the opening number – Steve Allen's Brassy “This Will Be the Beginning of Something” – is a song that Darrin famously sang. And so is the swing hit for the next “Beyond the Sea.” But in the big-name arrangement by Andrew Resnick for an 11-piece combo, they show more than themselves and entertainment at hand. At best, they subtly propose Darrin.
The salvation of that delicateness continues for a while. “Beyond the Sea” soon returns to Darrin's controversial childhood in East Harlem. There, Groff drops his persona and enters that of the sick boy Walden Robert Cassotto, born in 1936, indulges in her maternal Polly (Michele Pork) and is surrounded by her sister Nina (Emily Bergle). Nina's fretting can be justified. The doctor ordered Bobby not to live past 16. In an attempt to keep him away from excitement, she treats him as ineffective.
But former vaudeville performer Polly wants him to make the most of the time and gifts he has. If he is invalid, she says, “He's invalid who will become a star.” She teaches him how to sing and play them. She says she is “your real backup singer.” It's a neat touch as we've already seen how adult Darin absorbed the lessons in Groff's performance. His crazy, expressive hands dance (choreography by Shannon Lewis) as much as the three women in the mini dresses that silver spit out with the numbers on his bandstand.
His early scenes of professional efforts maintain part of its appeal, and the song is a valid example of what Darrin was singing at the time. (Mainly jingle and ripping off.) However, when emotional biographies are given priority, a jukebox flame begins and the tone becomes Haywire. Darrin's upcoming star Connie Francis (Gracey Lawrence)'s youthful courtship is performed for laughs. Still, by hooks and con artists, it leads to her singing the cry of the 1958 mega hit.
Even more troublesome is that the show deals with her subsequent relationship with teenage Sandra Dee (Erica Henningsen). Already the cheerful star of “Gidget”, Darrin is introduced as the self-representative “for me” self-representative “for me” and soon dives into the fierce vilago after marriage and the birth of his son Dodd. However, unlike Darrin, Dee is not given a pass. The repeated rape by her stepfather over the four years that begins when she was eight is relegated to a disposable line of incomprehensible people who are used to the story (“You don't know what happened when I was a child”).
“Just In Time” doesn't whitewash Darin completely, but a book about his parents in 1994 was produced in collaboration with Dodd Darin, who is very open-minded – the show tries to soften it and excuse him like that. The dotted line links his Dee's abuse to his confused upbringing. Narcissism is chalked up by others to blame him – he thinks it's better and calls it egotism – being chalked up to perfectionism. Continuous churn in relationships with collaborators, managers and record executives played by various ensemble members is depreciated as the cost of artistic growth. He is a savant, a dreamer, and not a provider of novel numbers like “Splish Splash.”
Some of these tone issues are alleviated by having Groff play him. That was also true in Groff's performance as Franklin Shepherd, the (fictional) songwriter on “Merrily We Roll Athon.” He won a Tony Award last year. In a sense, reversing the trajectory of that personality causes Darrin to run from idealism to disillusionment from divorce and alienation. However, Shepherd is a successful anti-hero. Because “Merrily” is carefully constructed to dramatize the road.
Semiconcerts cannot do that, especially with songs written for other reasons. As the uncertainty of the story takes over and the tuning bounces back to the B side, succumbs to the story's arthritis “just in time,” and the plots rub against each other to bare the show's vau-like bones. (It started out as a 2018 “Lyricists & Lyricists” concert at 92nd Street Y, based on the concept of Ted Chapin.) All symptoms are there. Segu with a yang collar, undigested Wikipedia backfill, unlikely news. “There's something important going on in the world,” Darrin helps Dee and us. “Vietnam. Civil Rights.”
By the time of his death at the age of 37 in 1973, the show's final descent into the glorious eulogy — “He finished six years of grammar school in four years and won a scholarship medal,” says Nina — overwhelmed its early buoyancy. But Groff is still swimming. It's all until the end. I was left to endure many others and I was disappointed and I have to admit that he is giving him one of Broadway's best performances. So who's sorry now?
Just in time
In a circle in Manhattan Square. JustIntimeBroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.
