Schmigadoon! Broadway Adaptation: A Hit-and-Miss Resurrection
Sara Chase, McKenzie Kurtz, Brad Oscar, Alex Brightman and the full company of Schmigadoon! have brought the cancelled television series to life on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre in New York. This spoofy musical comedy, originally an Apple TV production, makes a natural leap to the stage but often struggles to bring much that feels genuinely new to the material.
From Screen to Stage: A Logical Transition
While countless movies have been transformed into stage musicals against all reason, Schmigadoon! presents a different case. As a full-throated and boundlessly enthusiastic tribute to golden-age mid-century American musicals, it only makes sense for it to be restaged live on Broadway. The greater wonder is that the show started life as a television series during peak-streaming production levels.
TV musicals remain rare, with most famous examples being single-episode gimmicks or running gags on animated series. Schmigadoon! co-creators Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio hail from animation, having worked together at Illumination on films including Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets. They co-created a live-action TV series about a couple whose relationship crossroads coincide with their accidental arrival in a magical hidden world where everyone acts like they're in an old-fashioned musical.
The Broadway Adaptation
Paul, who took charge of the series after Daurio departed early on, has adapted the show's first season into a Broadway production. Both versions are a takeoff on Brigadoon, the 1947 musical about a magical Scottish town hidden from the world. In Schmigadoon!, characters Josh (Alex Brightman) and Melissa (Sara Chase) discover they cannot leave this bucolic, ambiguously time-warped town without finding "true love" first.
This challenge comes at a precarious time for their relationship, with Melissa finding Josh frustratingly noncommittal while Josh feels harassed by her perfectionism. During their stay, Melissa meets the handsome older man Doc Lopez (Ivan Hernandez), while Josh flirts with schoolmarm Emma Tate (Isabelle McCalla).
Streamlined for the Stage
The streamlined-for-stage version renders Schmigadoon! an even closer pastiche of its inspirations. While the Apple series used contemporary visual effects to simulate 1940s and 1950s musical styles, the stage version requires less trickery, simply reproducing that fanciful style in heightened fashion. There's less dialogue, more dancing, and the running gag of nearly every number receiving applause-milking reprises.
Paul and director Christopher Gattelli enhance the material's spectacle without sacrificing its knowing silliness. There's comic catharsis in how subtextual elements of classics like The Music Man and The Sound of Music are excavated and directly discussed in these spoof versions.
Performance Highlights and Shortcomings
Yet this high-energy, crowd-pleasing production sometimes comes across like a film production of a beloved Broadway classic: splashy, highly faithful, yet vaguely inferior. Part of the problem is that both Brightman and Chase often echo the spoken intonations of their TV counterparts, creating an effect akin to talented understudies who have observed the real leads too carefully.
Not all performances suffer this fate:
- Ana Gasteyer, taking over from Kristin Chenoweth as villainously prim scold Mildred Layton, is a riot, bringing welcome sketch-comedy sensibility
- McKenzie Kurtz goes for absolute broke as Betsy McDonough, the farmer's-daughter ingenue of murky age
Audience Reception and Final Verdict
With these zingy supporting performances, those who haven't seen the TV show may receive Schmigadoon! as an uncomplicated good time—both an affectionate send-up of shows still performed at American high schools and a tribute to why they endure despite outdated elements. However, even without watching the original version, some viewers will anticipate certain jokes and turns.
The non-musical portions of the TV show were sometimes at odd angles with the pure homage but lent characters a tension that often feels missing here. Schmigadoon! has been properly prepped and restructured for the stage, but apart from cosmetic changes, it's in the same boat as many adaptations: failing to offer much that's truly new.
