EGN NEWS DESK
It’s 2024, and Huey Lewis is having a second. Just let that sink in.
Lewis was an surprising spotlight of the current Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” concerning the star-studded 1985 session the place “We Are the World” was recorded. An everyman rocker, Lewis was amazed (and nonetheless is) that he was rubbing elbows with Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner and Bruce Springsteen. He even bought to sing the half initially meant for Prince.
Now comes the brand new Broadway present “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” which isn’t a lot a Huey Lewis (and the News) musical because the Huey Lewis of musicals: not taking itself too significantly, doing what it does properly, and simply blissful to be on Broadway, conserving firm with starrier productions.
Like most jukeboxes, “The Heart of Rock and Roll” shoehorns massive hits, together with “The Power of Love” and “Stuck With You,” with lesser-known tracks right into a plot generic sufficient to accommodate them.
Set in 1987, Jonathan A. Abrams’s e-book, based mostly on a narrative by Tyler Mitchell and Abrams, facilities on Bobby (Corey Cott, from the underrated “Bandstand”), an worker at an ailing cardboard field producer, Stone Incorporated, in Milwaukee. Bobby works on the meeting line, however he actually needs to hitch the gross sales division so he can “Be Someone,” because the present’s new track places it. Wait, no, possibly what he actually needs is to rock out together with his previous band, the Loop. Bobby may sing “It’s Hip to Be Square,” however deep down, does he actually consider it?
By now you might need observed that desires play an enormous half in “The Heart of Rock and Roll.” There are quite a few references to chasing the dream, making it come true and residing it, but in addition giving it up. Sentimentality is commonly ladled out, together with clichés. And Bobby, whose sole persona trait seems to be “good man,” carries greater than his share of each — he hears the fateful siren name “one final present” and lugs emotional baggage associated to his “previous man.” At least Cott offers Bobby a laid-back appeal that’s not not like Lewis’s personal, alongside together with his emotional massive Act II aria, “The Only One.”
Fortunately, there’s additionally sufficient good-natured goofball humor to maintain Gordon Greenberg’s manufacturing from sinking into cloying goo. Much of the levity comes from amusing supporting characters, beginning with Bobby’s love curiosity and his boss’s daughter, Cassandra (McKenzie Kurtz, a current Glinda in “Wicked”). She is an uber-dork with a passion for spreadsheets, and Kurtz’s Cassandra is a daffy delight that remembers Annaleigh Ashford’s efficiency in “Kinky Boots.”
That is just not the one time “The Heart of Rock and Roll” brings to thoughts that hit, which can also be set at a manufacturing facility. Like Jerry Mitchell’s within the earlier present, Lorin Latarro’s high-energy choreography right here makes intelligent use of props, having workers slide on cardboard sheets and deploying the ensemble in a quantity that entails leaping on Bubble Wrap.
That scene takes place at a packaging conference, the place Stone Inc. is making an attempt to drum up enterprise. For obscure causes, the corporate’s smart head of H.R., Roz (a splendidly droll Tamika Lawrence), has tagged alongside. She, too, needed to make a life-changing choice as soon as — “and it’s a great factor,” Roz dryly quips, “as a result of in any other case I by no means would have discovered the unbridled pleasure of ‘human sources.’” (This units up the most effective plot twist, which comes on the very finish.)
Naturally, good Midwesterners want a depraved antagonist, ideally of the putting-on-airs type (an enormous no-no within the Huey Lewis universe). And right here the present over-delivers due to the loose-limbed physical-comedy ace Billy Harrigan Tighe and his memorable efficiency as Tucker, Cassandra’s cocky finance-bro ex. In the quantity “Give Me the Keys (And I’ll Drive You Crazy),” he and his previous Princeton a cappella group, the Undertones, invite Cassandra for a journey in a faux automobile. The second when Kurtz mimes opening the door and Tighe mimes rolling down the window is a robust contender for single funniest scene of the Broadway spring.
While the dialogue has occasional pop, it’s the performances that hold the present rolling, together with Greenberg and Latarro’s fast-paced, resourceful staging. Bobby’s “I Want a New Drug,” for instance, is a cheap abstract of why many males be a part of rock bands: In his lodge room on the conference, simply as he pulls out his beloved guitar, dealing with it like a holy relic, three ladies magically emerge from contained in the mattress — in a nifty contact, their outfits are stylized representations of Bobby’s axe. (The costumes are by Jen Caprio.)
“The Heart of Rock and Roll” is just not going to be the topic of suppose items and graduate theses, however its easygoing good spirits are bolstered by stable craftsmanship, and it’d be foolish to show up our noses at that. “Have a great time,” Huey Lewis as soon as sang, properly quoting Curtis Mayfield. “’Cause it’s all proper.”
The Heart of Rock and Roll
At the James Earl Jones Theater, Manhattan; heartofrocknrollbway.com. Running time: 2 hours half-hour.
