“There are many layers to this particular s**t-show,” director Nigel (Brooks Ashmanskas) says as he tries to restore order to rehearsals for Bombshell, a musical about Marilyn Monroe. He could also be referring to the Broadway musical, Smash (Imperial Theatre, booking to Jan 4, 2026), about the making of Bombshell that is unfolding before our eyes.
Is it any surprise that this musical, based on the NBC drama series, is such a bizarre, loopy mess? Probably not to the fans who were glued to the two, shenanigans-packed seasons of Smash—which ran between 2012 and 2013—who became used to it boomeranging from one contorted plot point to another. (The infamous spiked smoothie incident of the TV show is redrawn as a laxative-dosed cupcake in the musical.)
At the time, debate raged about the characters and storylines—Ellis the scheming assistant, the epic non-rivalry of Ivy and Karen, Debra Messing’s scarves, and Brian d’Arcy James, who deserved so much better. The show didn’t so much jump the shark as merrily execute multiple somersaults over its gnashing jaws.
The show’s fanbase remained devoted at the time, and—producers of the musical are banking on—to this day; the show about the fraught genesis of one, then two competing Broadway musicals, was full of souped-up soapy twists, theater insider jokes, and famous-person cameos. It was also great fun, and featured fizzing musical numbers in every episode, with—just as the Broadway show does—music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman.
However, the laborious dud of a musical now bearing its name doesn’t seem to know what it is, and its most needless act of self-sabotage is that it screws its own fans over.
Why, for example, are there only two actual characters remaining from the show—its two leading ladies, Ivy (Robyn Hurder) and Karen (Caroline Bowman)? Why, when Karen is a lead character, does the musical accord her the bare minimum to do? Where is the evidence of her alleged friendship with Ivy, apart from a let’s-make-up scene at the end, which makes no sense because we have seen nothing of them together?
What is Karen’s character even for, except a strangely whiny big number in the second act (“They Just Keep Moving the Line”) to remind herself, and us, that she is still actually there?
Hurder as Ivy is on stage more, but for much of the show she is written as shallow, and two-dimensionally, irredeemably obnoxious. In the bananas spirit of the TV show at least, the reason for her terrible behavior is down to the malign influence of Susan Proctor (Kristine Nielsen), an acting Svengali clad all in black who has Ivy popping pills and actually believing she is Marilyn on stage and off: “The Method will lift you up! And the Benzedrine’ll help.”
Drugged up, with ego toxically magnified, Ivy becomes an impossible, and not fun-impossible, diva. This is a repetitive grind to watch, and means we couldn’t care if she performs the part of Marilyn in Bombshell at all.
The other original TV show characters have been erased and reconstituted. There’s Nigel (not Derek, gay rather than straight), the two writer characters who have been transformed from heterosexual woman and longtime gay friend into a husband and wife played by John Behlmann and (star of the original TV show) Krysta Rodriguez—he’s a drunk, she’s responsible, and that’s that. The producer-figure is still chic, though now called Anita (Jacqueline B. Arnold). Her assistant Scott (Nicholas Matos), like his TV version is young, though not a malevolent sneak as Ellis was—just a nepo baby adept at social media.
If fans of the TV show recall one song it is the fantastic earworm “Let Me Be Your Star.” In the musical it crops up throughout the show, as if someone is annoyingly tapping you on your arm to say, “See, this is why you love me.” Ivy sings it at the start in a shaky arrangement that is the most underwhelming opening to a musical so far on Broadway this spring.
Then, because Karen apparently doesn’t count as a character, assistant choreographer Chloe (Bella Coppola), comes to the fore because she’s a great singer—though overlooked because of how she looks—and so belts “Let Me Be Your Star” to take us into the intermission. It’s a resounding rendition, and also a tangibly desperate roll of the show’s dice.
Are we rooting for Ivy, Chloe, or Karen to play Marilyn? Who knows: the musical doesn’t make a compellingly dramatized case for any of them; the rest of the show loses the thread of their characters’ stories and instead becomes about the backstage dramas caused by Ivy’s weird behavior, Susan’s presence, and assorted sundry hysteria leading to opening night.
The musical can thank its lucky stars for the formidable comedic chops of Ashmanskas, who plays Nigel as a whirling dervish of nerves and bitchy one-liners; he single handedly keeps the show afloat when on stage. Of the constant presence of Susan, he asks: “Who is the wizened old woman in black that Ivy must touch like an ancient rune before each line?” He calls her, variously, “Death” and the “Cryptkeeper.”
Noting Karen’s foisting of cupcakes on the entire company, he says: “She brings them in every morning. They’re filled with Irish butter and children’s dreams. She’s killing us.”
Susan Stroman’s direction is strongest when moments of chaos engulf the company, while a battery of snappy in-jokes about Broadway shows and history, and others aimed at the influence of influencers, elicit the biggest laughs. “This is my 17th Broadway show,” Nigel says. “I’ve paid my dues. I was Joseph Papp’s associate on Hamlet in the park. So when you’ve pried a raccoon off Kevin Kline’s face, then you can give me directing tips.”
“Come on Scott. Watch us fire the biggest star on Broadway,” Anita says.
“We’re going to fire Hugh Jackman?” Scott replies.
But these zingers, smart as they are, don’t a winning musical make. Smash sputters to an unsatisfying, flat conclusion centered around the meta-aspect of all that we have observed. “Let Me Be Your Star” returns for a final burst, sung by the whole company—a restated plea for devotion that Smash the musical has sorely tested.
