{"id":596967,"date":"2026-04-21T05:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/596967\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T05:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:21:08","slug":"musical-with-enough-corn-puddin-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/596967\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical With Enough Corn Puddin’ For All"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTitan\u00edque is more outlandish (and funnier), Something Rotten! was sharper (and funnier) and Smash, well, Smash was none of those. Taking a comfortable, crowd-satisfying spot somewhere in the middle of recent (or recentish) stage musicals that mock stage musicals (and Titan\u00edque qualifies for its ad-lib Just In Time or Two Strangers excursions), Schmigadoon<\/a>!, based on the first season of the Apple Original series, is a bright, pleasant diversion from whatever real world villainy is bedeviling you at the moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough in choosing its mass-appeal musical theater punchlines Schmigadoon! typically demands little more knowledge than things we might have learned on Glee or seen in the odd Simpsons episode, the Cinco Paul musical has enough \u201cif you know you know\u201d moments to tickle the theater die-hards. If you know the fate of any lustful carny hunk who can bust a ballet move at a moment\u2019s notice, Schmigadoon! will charm.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you\u2019ve not seen the 2021-2023 series, the premise is this: A young man and woman, both doctors (Alex Brightman<\/a> and Sarah Chase<\/a>), meet cute near the hospital vending machine, marry and within a few years are bickering and giving more attention to their smart phones than to one another (this is all conveyed, via time jumps, on stage in just minutes, cleverly).<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a walk through the woods at a marriage retreat, Josh and Melissa cross a fairy-tale-looking bridge and find themselves in a land of nostalgically painted flats suggesting an over-the-rainbow land of Music Man Americana, Brigadoon enchantment and the carnival enticements of Carousel. Much to the consternation of the musical-hating Josh (he even loathes Singin\u2019 In The Rain, despite Melissa\u2019s best case-making) the couple have found themselves smack-dab in the middle of just such a wonderland.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn short order Josh, Melissa and the audience meet quaintly attired townsfolk who by way of introduction break into the local theme song \u201cSchmigadoon!,\u201d sounding just this side of litigation like the title song from Oklahoma. A cute little boy with a lisp isn\u2019t named Winthrop but he might as well be. A good-looking ne\u2019er-do-well carnival worker named Danny Bailey sets about wooing Melissa in his best Billy Bigelow fashion, and local gal Betsy (McKenzie Kurtz), an Ado Annie by way of Dogpatch, has her eyes on Josh. If nothing else, she\u2019ll win him over with her delicious corn puddin\u2019 (and yes, Schmigadoon! is fully aware of any and all double entendres \u2013 single ones too for that matter). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSara Chase, Max Clayton<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as the various townsfolk characters are clearly modeled on those that trod the musical boards back in Broadway<\/a>\u2018s Golden Age, so too does the score owe its debts. Composer Paul has concocted a pastiche of songs forever on the edge of our memories if not our tongues. Some of the show\u2019s musical numbers are closer to their source material than others \u2013 Danny\u2019s \u201cYou Done Tamed Me\u201d references Billy Bigelow\u2019s \u201cSoliloquy\u201d from Carousel, \u201cTribulation\u201d is a tongue-twister patter song modeled on \u201cYou Got Trouble\u201d from The Music Man (performed in Schmigadoon! by a scene stealing Ana Gasteyer<\/a> as the villainous, book-burning pastor\u2019s wife), and, perhaps with the least amount of disguise, \u201cBaby Talk\u201d uses Sound of Music\u2018s childlike \u201cDo-Re-Mi\u201d for an explicit biology lesson on where babies come from. <\/p>\n

\n\tIf you watched the TV series, you\u2019ll recognize some of these moments \u2013 along with others such as the fan-favorite celebration of \u201cCorn Puddin!\u201d \u2013 but what you might miss is the inherent strangeness of seeing these fantasy worlds displayed within the hyper-real confines of a television screen. On stage, Josh and Melissa, our wanderers from the land of reality, are subsumed into an actual musical rather than a vaguely Truman Show-style refraction. Something\u2019s lost in the translation, but with dazzling costumes, hyper-energetic singing and dancing and joyful spirit filling the Nederlander, quibbles end up banished beyond the flats.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAna Gasteyer has \u2018Tribulation\u2019 in \u2018Schmigadoon!<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cast, under Christopher Gattelli\u2019s spirit-matching direction and choreography, seem to be having the time of their lives, and why not? Gasteyer\u2019s comic chops have diminished not an iota since her long-ago SNL days, and her uptight Elmira Gulch prickliness is as flawless as her \u201cTrouble in River City,\u201d I mean, \u201cTribulation in Schmigadoon\u201d delivery. If Cinco Paul ever gets around to a stage sequel advancing his Broadway timeline, Gasteyer needs \u201cLast Midnight\u201d like Mandy Patinkin needed to finish that damn hat.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll have their moments: Chase, Harada, Ivan Hernandez (as the town Doc with all the bedside manner of Captain Von Trapp), Brad Oscar as closeted Mayor Menlove whose penchant for outfits as fanciful as any thing from Munchkinland is matched only by his tender longing for that shy town reverend (Maulik Pancholy).<\/p>\n

\n\tOnly the usually high-spirited Alex Brightman seems lacking in purpose here. Playing the no-nonsense musical-hating science guy leaves the expansive star of Beetlejuice,\u00a0School of Rock and\u00a0Spamalot with too few enjoyments to share, too few moments of comic stage business, and certainly not enough songs to belt. Brightman\u2019s Josh, as often as not, is merely left to grouse something along the lines of \u201ckill me now\u201d when all around him are plunging headfirst into the joyous, endorphin-exploding pleasures of song, dance and facial expressions contorted with musical theater bliss. Poor guy. Someone book him on the Titan\u00edque, stat.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: Schmigadoon!
Venue: Broadway\u2019s Nederlander Theatre
Director: Christopher Gattelli
Book & Music: Cinco Paul (based on the Apple Original series co-created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio)
Cast: Alex Brightman, Sara Chase, Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada, Brad Oscar, Isabelle McCalla, Ivan Hernandez, Maulik Pancholy, Max Clayton, McKenzie Kurtz, Ayaan Diop
Running time: 2 hrs 30 min (including intermission)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Titan\u00edque is more outlandish (and funnier), Something Rotten! was sharper (and funnier) and Smash, well, Smash was none…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[260168,181538,21540,110469,88,260169,260170],"class_list":{"0":"post-596967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-alex-brightman","9":"tag-ana-gasteyer","10":"tag-broadway","11":"tag-broadway-review","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-sarah-chase","14":"tag-schmigadoon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}