Rejoice, ye musical nerds! On the stage of the Eisenhower Theater, off the Hall of States at the Kennedy Center, between the Watergate complex and the Lincoln Memorial, at the heart of America’s temple to high-minded midcentury cultural propriety, your disreputable art form, with its salty predilections and disruptive mores, is on loving display in “Schmigadoon!”
But maybe that’s overselling what is essentially a dandy little spoof of some tuners.
You may recall that “Schmigadoon!” was an Apple TV+ series about a contemporary couple who, experiencing relationship problems, find themselves trapped in a world of love-insisting musicals. During its first season, in 2021, that world was highly reminiscent of Broadway shows of the 1940s and ’50s like “The Music Man,” “Carousel” and “Oklahoma!” but with bits of “The Sound of Music,” “Brigadoon” and “Kiss Me, Kate” tossed in. In the second season, the scene shifted to “Schmicago” and musicals of the ’70s. (An unproduced third season would have taken the couple “Into the Schmoods.”)
The show being offered through Sunday by the Kennedy Center’s musical theater initiative, called Broadway Center Stage, is essentially the first season’s six-episode arc boiled down to two acts by its author, Cinco Paul. If you loved the television show, you probably know every note. If not, you probably don’t want to.
I say that as someone whose feelings run in the middle. Neither onscreen nor onstage was I ever very interested in the on-the-outs couple, Josh and Melissa, for the simple reason that as characters they are skeletally thin. He’s the repressed, flat-affect guy; she’s in touch with her ambivalence to the point of annoyance. Though very smartly and appealingly performed here, by Alex Brightman and especially Sara Chase, neither would have lasted two scenes as protagonists of any of the musicals “Schmigadoon” models itself on.
But, oh, those musicals! They are classics for a reason, whether for pure delight or complex feeling, and never as normative as they appear on the surface. “Oklahoma!” asks us to accept the inevitable harshness of life but not buckle under it; “Carousel” questions the possibility of redemption. “The Music Man” suggests that, in River City as elsewhere, even the truest love is a bit of a scam.
“Schmigadoon” samples these themes, if mostly for mere amusement, but what it really intends to sample are the characters and songs. In the enchanted town where Josh and Melissa are trapped, we meet Betsy McDonough (McKenzie Kurtz), a possibly underage variant on Ado Annie from “Oklahoma!”; Danny Bailey (Ryan Vasquez), an absurdly dimpled and dimwitted carnival barker like Billy Bigelow in “Carousel”; a phlegmatic reverend (Kevin Del Aguila) arguably from “Guys and Dolls”; and several citizens of River City, including a clueless mayor (Brad Oscar), a moralistic busybody (Emily Skinner), a prim teacher (Isabelle McCalla) and the lisping little boy (Ayaan Diop) who everyone knows is not really her brother.
For the stage, Paul has added a couple of songs, one (“Not That Kinda Gal”) to give Melissa a bit more substance and another (“I Thought I Was the Only One”) to flesh out the closeted attraction between Mayor Menlove and the reverend. (Wasn’t the mayor’s name enough?) On a very brightly lit, flatly decorated stage (lighting by Jen Schriever, settings by Scott Pask), Christopher Gattelli, the director and choreographer, has created scenes and dances that are more natively theatrical than those he staged for the camera, many sampling the athletic period style of Onna White and Michael Kidd. But it’s mostly the same experience, compacted.
That has its pluses and minuses. It’s certainly great fun to locate the references and laugh at the lapses Paul identifies in the originals. The catchy silliness of “A Real Nice Clambake” is perfectly skewered in “Corn Puddin’.” The glamorous Countess Gabriele Von Blerkom, a take on the Baroness Elsa von Schraeder from “The Sound of Music,” is deftly pegged as a likely Nazi though “it’s never explicitly stated.” Angel Reda does a great job with her why-does-this-minor-character-have-a-song song, a Cole Porter pastiche.
And though I never quite understood who Doc Lopez (Javier Muñoz) and Florence Menlove (Ann Harada) were supposed to resemble, I loved the “Carousel” snark, including a flick at Billy Bigelow’s “really high-waisted” pants. (The hilarious costumes are by Linda Cho.) When Billy, paraphrasing the great “Soliloquy,” sings that he’ll get money for his unborn child even if he must “steal it” or “take it,” Melissa dryly points out, as many of us have muttered to ourselves over the years, “Those are the same thing.”
But there’s only so long an Easter egg hunt remains compelling. Paul, clearly understanding this, often cuts away from his jokes before they grow stale — but also before we get the full fun of them. The wicked parody of “Do-Re-Mi” from “The Sound of Music,” in which Melissa, who is an obstetrician, teaches the facts of life to a highly pregnant but deeply naïve young woman, vanishes as soon as you get to the zinger. (It’s called “Va-Gi-Na.”) Unable to compete except in a sprint, other one-note takeoffs take off even faster.
That makes some sense, as Paul’s aim is breadth not depth. But — not to harsh your satirical high — there is something dispiriting about the way every number tickles your memory without nourishing it. After an opening phrase essentially lifted from their Golden Age models, the songs veer off in their own copyright-avoiding direction, never as successful as the originals. Only at the end, when the focus returns to Josh and Melissa, does Paul find a sound unlike anyone else’s, serving these characters specifically and not just the memory of their forebears.
Those forebears aren’t going anywhere. And the shows they come from will always be ripe for ribbing. Had they not lasted 80 years, “Schmigadoon!” would have nothing to do. Luckily, and to the joy of many who long for its adoring-needling content, it justifies itself by keeping the line of descent alive and lively. If it’s mostly parasitical, or let’s say symbiotic, that may simply be our era’s expression of love. And, as we’ve learned, even the truest love is a bit of a scam.
Schmigadoon!
Through Feb. 9 at the Kennedy Center, Washington; kennedy-center.org. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes.