Jonathan Groff Shines As Bobby Darin

Just In Time, the Bobby Darin jukebox musical starring Jonathan Groff opening tonight at a wonderfully dressed Circle in the Square on Broadway, does some serious and genuine starmaking, twice over in fact. Darin, the once hugely popular but now barely remembered nightclub singer and Top 40 hitmaker is returned to a spot in our cultural memory, and Groff, the Tony-winning star of last season’s Merrily We Roll Along and for years now one of the stage’s more popular young actors, newly emerges to the top ranks of the best, most natural all-around entertainers working today.

Some performances – think Liza Minnelli in the film Cabaret, or Hugh Jackman in Broadway’s The Boy From Oz – send their stars into new stratospheres, something outside the labels “actor” and “singer” and into that exclusive circle of stars who can hold a stage both as a character and as themselves, instantly recognizable and unique.

Just in Time, directed by Alex Timbers from an original concept by Ted Chapin, is an ideal showcase for Groff, in no small part due to the rather ingenious premise of the bio-musical: In a very effective framing device, Groff is introduced to the stage as Groff, setting up the show’s ground rules: Groff isn’t playing Darin, he’s playing Groff playing Darin, a conceit that allows the star not only to break the fourth wall but that sets him free to speak directly about why he is so taken by a singer who died in 1973, making us care too.

And perhaps most significantly, the Groff-as-Darin premise means the actor doesn’t have to imitate Darin. Groff sings Darin’s song as Groff – and all the better – and that simple approach lifts the restraints that strangle most jukebox musicals. Just In Time doesn’t always avoid the contrivances of the genre, but it renders them insignificant.

But no mistake: Just in Time is a jukebox musical, not a Jonathan Groff Sings The Songs Of Bobby Darin concert (though I’d buy a ticket for that). In between songs – performed on Derek McLane’s magnificently designed Circle in the Square made over as an immersive, gloriously art deco Copa-style nightclub that just might be the best use of that venue’s troublesome in-the-round design in memory – Just in Time tells Darin’s story in standard jukebox manner. A cast of characters including family members, colleagues and famous loves Connie Francis and Sandra Dee recreate, with Groff, snippets that tell the tale of his life in fairly broad strokes.

Born in East Harlem in 1936, Darin had the odds stacked against him from the get-go. Frequent bouts of rheumatic fever left the kid’s heart so weakened that one childhood doctor predicted a lifespan of 16 years. Darin, encouraged by his supportive, hardboiled ex-vaudeville singer mother Polly (the great Michele Pawk), determines to live life fast, cramming in as much success as his limited time will allow. He starts as a songwriter, earning some success copying the styles of whoever happens to have a hit at the moment.

But when the emerging recording star Connie Francis takes notice, Darin’s luck changes. The two East Coast kids not only embark on a secret affair (her overprotective dad has a gun, and vows to use it), but quickly find fame. For Darin, that means by recording his own music, starting with the novelty rock and roll number “Splish Splash” and then the catchy if mopey “Dream Lover.”

His legacy would be set, though, when he decided, against the advice of his management, to adapt the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera dirge “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” into something with a finger-snapping beat and a ’50s lounge vibe. Mack The Knife was a huge hit in 1959 and and has long since become a standard.

As Just In Time suggests, though, Darin was never satisfied, and his near-pathological drive had him constantly chasing new styles of music (including a brief, ill-advised turn as a Dylan-like folkie). He also went through women – Connie Francis (a powerhouse Gracie Lawrence) broke his heart, but he more or less sabotaged his marriage to Sandra Dee (a clear-voiced Erika Henningsen), at least as depicted in Just In Time. Dragging the equally popular Dee (and their infant son) on tour with him, Darin mostly ignores her. She drinks, makes public scenes and soon enough Darin has his brother-in-law/toady deliver his request for a divorce.

Other biographical scenarios focus mostly on his family, and only the solid performances of Pawk and Emily Bergl as, respectively, Darin’s morphine-addicted mother and put-upon sister – the family relationships shift in the late reveal of a long-kept secret – keep the non-musical book sections from slipping into the usual Wikipedia-sounding exposition so typical of the jukebox genre. (Director Timbers and book writers Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver also devise some brief, funny cameo appearances by, among others, Elvis Presley and a gloomy Lotte Lenya, performers who spark Darin’s imagination.)

Just in Time is front-loaded with the best, or at least most recognizable, songs in the first act, leaving the second half less hummable and stacked with the more melodramatic, treacly and standard-jukebox book bits, but all that matters little. Groff, assisted by a terrific trio of singer-dancers (Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, Valeria Yamin) who back him up through the years and many, many fashions and dance styles, is tireless and captivating throughout the show. Long known for the copious amounts of spit and sweat he releases during a performance – he jokingly acknowledges his “wetness” early in the show – Groff embodies the give-it-all stage style embodied by Minnelli in her prime, and with Just In Time we watch as, song by song and dance by dance, a stage performer of the highest order blossoms.

Just In Time leaves nothing to chance. McLane’s art deco nightclub bandstand is glorious, beautifully lit in washes of variously colored lights (designed by Justin Townsend), and Catherine Zuber’s costume design perfectly captures the various eras – she especially has fun with the oh-so-mod ’60s – without turning the whole thing into a Halloween costume party. Groff dons one specially-designed tux jacket after another, with pinks and yellows marking the dinner jackets to specific eras and the eventual sparkly black numbers paying loving homage to the gaudy and joyous excesses of the nightclub and casino eras.

Likewise, Shannon Lewis’ choreography barrels through the eras with uncanny accuracy – Groff and his trio of “Sirens” are especially delightful doing the ’60s dance-craze moves – the Twist, the Swim – as if they’re on the soundstage of Hullabaloo or Shindig!

With Andrew Resnick’s crisp musical arrangements and a faultless sound design by Peter Hylenski, Groff and his costars knock one song after another out of the park. To name just a couple: Lawrence, as Connie Francis, adds just enough Jersey grit to her musical theater chops to deliver a belt-down-the-house “Who’s Sorry Now,” and Pawk, as Darin’s maybe-mother turns chanteuse to serenade a young Bobby with the chanson “La Mer,” instilling in Darin a lifelong love for the song that would become one of his signature hits “Beyond The Sea.”

Other musical highlights – some performed outside the nightclub setting with some scenery changes that indicate seaside Italy or Hollywood slumming – include Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter” (the sole hit from Darin’s folkie era), a jazzed up “Lazy River” and the gently swinging “Just In Time,” the Styne-Comden-Green standard that gives the show a name that serves as a metaphor for the rush-rush-rush nature of Darin’s short life (he was just 37 when his heart quit).

During his frequent interactions with the audience – he dances on tables, dances with delighted audience members – Groff is blunt about why he finds Darin’s story so compelling: The story of the “nightclub animal” who lived only for the stage, the audience and the spotlight is Groff’s story too.

Early in the show, as the band vamps on “Beyond The Sea,” Gross, working the audience, says slyly, “I first heard this next song the way we all first heard this next song – twirling in our mother’s heels in Pennsylvania Amish country, listening to our father’s records…I never would’ve guessed I’d have anything in common with him, the playboy crooner and me in Mom’s pumps, but turns out I do. He loved – [gestures back and forth between himself and the audience] – this. It was the only relationship he was any good at. Honestly? Same.”

Title: Just In Time
Venue: Broadway’s Circle In The Square
Director: Alex Timbers
Music: The hits of Bobby Darrin
Book: Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver
Cast: Jonathan Groff, Gracie Lawrence, Erika Henningsen, Michele Pawk, Joe Barbara, Emily Bergl, Lance Roberts, Caesar Samayoa, Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, Valeria Yamin, John Treacy Egan, Tari Kelly, Matt Magnusson, Khori Michelle Petinaud and Larkin Reilly.
Running time: 2 hr 20 min (including intermission)