Just in Time review – Bobby Darin musical is light on detail but big on charm

Circle in the Square Theatre, New YorkJonathan Groff uses his considerable charisma to embody the late singer with pizzazz in a rousing yet incomplete Broadway showIt is more than likely that Jonathan Groff, the star of the new Broadway show Just in Time, has more name recognition in today’s New York than Bobby Darin, the midcentury singer whom he plays in this jukebox bio-musical, of sorts. Darin’s relative lack of contemporary reputation compared with, say, the Temptations, is why Just in Time, written by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver from a concept by Ted Chapin, situates its narrative of a life lived in the fast lane behind a very porous fourth wall, the easier to explain who Sandra Dee is. It’s why Groff, smartly dressed and toting a retro microphone, greets the audience at Manhattan’s Circle in the Square Theatre not as Darin, the baby-faced playboy crooner, but as Groff, Broadway king fresh off his Tony win, poised to deliver a night of rousing, enthusiastic theater befitting a consummate showman.The Tony win goes unmentioned, though Groff’s intro mirrors his moving acceptance speech: as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, all he wanted to do was entertain. Sing and dance and bring joy. Groff explicitly compares himself to Darin (and, in one of the show’s many winking bits, acknowledges that yes, he will spit and sweat a lot while recounting the life story of the man whose first hit was Splish Splash). The melding of personas successfully transmutes Groff’s exceptional charisma and earned goodwill into the tale of a past celebrity most of the audience could not identify via photo. But it also makes suspension of disbelief an impossible hurdle; it is difficult with such an emphasis on the performer’s magnetism, to invest in the details of the subject’s actual life, which are occasionally tossed off like Wikipedia entries. Continue reading...

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