Something to shout about? ‘BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical’ thru Broadway in Chicago

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

There has been a Broadway-aimed Betty Boop musical in the hopper for at least thirty years. The involvement of pop composer / producer David Foster was first announced in 2008, and this is to say nothing of the bookwriters, composers, and lyricists who had already been dismissed by that point.

But even though the musical now playing in Chicago in its way taps into the current zeitgeist for multiverses and such, we’re not here to muse on the what-mighta-beens. We’re here to check out what is of course titled BOOP!.

And what we have is a pleasantly faux-retro musical comedy with a walloping star turn to tie it all together. And presently there are a lot of things—perhaps too many things—to tie together.

Its more modern locutions notwithstanding, BOOP! feels like a musical that could have played very well on the loosey-goosey Broadway of the 1930s, when Betty was front and center in pop culture. Being readily familiar, the show could skip over the drudgeries of establishing Boop’s persona, plop her in a zany situation with a cast of new and equally zany supporting characters (who would need filling out), and let the hilarity ensue all around her.

(And in the 1930s, that set-up could probably have spawned a series of little musicals. These days, the stakes being what they are, this is the one shot.)

And wouldn’tcha know, Bob Martin, co-author of another faux-retro musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, has called upon that very same old-timey structure. Betty (Jasmine Amy Rogers), looking for some me-time away from her demanding career as a cartoon It Girl, lands in real-life present-day Manhattan thanks to her daffy inventor Grampy (Stephen DeRosa). She meets a parade of characters, including a studly wannabe trad jazzer (Ainsley Anthony Melham), a crooked mayoral candidate (Erich Bergen), his put-upon campaign manager (Anastasia McCleskey), and her shy daughter (Angelica Hale).

Does hilarity ensue? Well, those three real-life threads—the romance with the jazzer, the vicissitudes of the election, and getting the young girl out of her shell—happen around each other without quite coalescing into a singular climax. And while Betty’s absence from the cartoon world throws the entire fabric of her reality out of whack, the real world as a whole just kind of accepts the idea that cartoons exist out there somewhere. A firmer balance between the two worlds is called for.

And there’s a challenge to writing a musical about a cartoon icon, less so a character. The musical raises the question itself—early on, Betty is asked “Who is Betty Boop?”, and that’s what prompts her journey—but she gets caught up in all those other plot threads and thus never quite sticks the landing of revelation. She’s certainly as pert and forthright as she’s ever been since her first reels, but a variation on theme at least might be nice. That said, the situations in which she does find herself allow a certain nuttiness as well as real-life gravity.

Oh, I forgot one extra plot thread: Grampy, chasing Betty into the real world, runs into an old astrophysicist flame in the form of Broadway favorite Faith Prince. And this next sentence gives rise to mixed emotions: the audience wants more Rogers—so much more Rogers—and not so much Prince. Not that Prince is given much to do as is.

These recalibrations are doable. Moreover, BOOP!, by most indication, seems to have a creative and producing team that is open to making changes and not just sitting back and counting the box office receipts. (Looking at you, Pretty Woman.)

The Broadway world tends to regard pop-smiths with skepticism, but Foster is coming by the work honestly and has written music that hits a sweet spot between the high-J belting he’s known for and a certain silly squonkiness that Carl Stalling would approve. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics meanwhile quickly make their point before becoming decorative, but they have real faux-retro cleverness and tang.

And what can be said of Rogers as Boop? She won me over from the start with just her Boop-ish face, the rest of her tucked behind a pageant of cardboard cutouts. If nothing else, that opening number, “A Little Versatility,” might just prove a heckuva calling card.

So we got a darn good BOOP! in this universe. One that I’m pretty sure will be made even better come its next stop, wherever that may be. There’s plenty of ink in that inkwell.

BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical runs through Dec. 24 at 18 W. Monroe St. For tickets or more information, please call (800) 775-2000 or visit broadwayinchicago.com or boopthemusical.com.

For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.