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I remember thinking when the Broadway-bound musical based on Betty Boop was announced that it had genius potential.
The character was a widely known brand, and yet most of us knew nothing about that character, making her a blank canvas, creatively. A shapely brunette with a flapper dress and haircut and a cooing “boop-boop-be-do” catchphrase.
She shared some things in common with another blank-canvas character, Barbie, who, like Boop, was known for an immaculate figure and high heels. But the comparisons are not perfect, as Boop is a product of the thirties, and Barbie of the fifties. Barbie is a toy, with most of her story constructed through television commercials and the collective imagination of young girls who’ve played with her at some point in their lives.
Boop, on the other hand, is a cartoon character with a full body of narrative work, including one-hundred cartoons alone. Boop was invented by the astonishingly creative Max Fleischer, who was a pioneer in animation and a creative rival to Walt Disney. One of the great pleasures of the new “Boop!” musical is the cleverness of how this heritage is woven into the story and the production design.
“Boop!” starts out in black-and-white, on a film studio lot where Betty’s cartoons are being made. When a fawning reporter asks her “Who is the real Betty Boop!” she spirals into the kind of existential crisis that only a character who knows she’s fictional can have. Soon, her “Grampy,” who serves as both companion and a goofy scientist reminiscent of Doc Brown in “Back to the Future,” has her traveling between dimensions into the contemporary “real world” where she lands, appropriately, at New York Comic Con and discovers color, garish color, in the form of Pokemon and Velma cosplayers.
Sounds like the “Barbie” movie? Similar fish-out-of-water themes and continuing identity crises abound, though where Barbie finds feminism, Boop, it turns out, was already a feminist. Though the superficial cultural take on Boop is that she was a vacuous sex symbol, it turns out that Fleischer filled her celluloid soul with moxie. She had no need for a man to accomplish great things, and mostly ended the lustful harassment of would-be paramours with a frying pan or a desk lamp across the head. So naturally, what does Boop find in the real world? A man. And a rather milquetoast one at that. A Ken.
“Boop!” is a musical that soars in its first act but sags in the second, as the extremely creative production design and its engaging portrayal of two dimensions gives way to a contrived and predictable plot bogged down by a fledgling romance that never convinces. But the choreography is superlative throughout, especially in the first act, with its big, show-stopping ensemble of tap dancers. It’s not surprising, since director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell is a two-time Tony winner in the category, for “Kinky Boots” and the revival of “La Cage aux Folles.” I especially loved the first number, “A Little Versatility,” choreographed like a scene from a thirties Hollywood musical, bathed in black-and-white, and I found myself wishing that Boop’s verbal awkwardness in the modern world had also manifested on the dance floor, but she seems to step into contemporary choreography without a misstep.
The music by songwriting legend David Foster is propulsive, with a few hits (“Why Look Around the Corner”) and misses (“She Knocks Me Out”—though in fairness this song is probably better than the character who sings it).
The cast is loaded with talent, most notably Tony winner Faith Prince, who plays Grampy’s love interest Valentina with mature sensuality, and Pudgy, the dog, who comes to life via legendary marionette artist Phillip Huber. But no one compares to Jasmine Amy Rogers, who is Betty Boop, from the voice to the mannerisms to the can-do spirit tempered by vulnerability. And can she dance and sing? Yes.
A star is born again.
“Boop! The Betty Boop Musical” at Broadway In Chicago’s CIBC Theatre, 18 West Monroe, through December 24.
