Putting quality aside for the moment, you have to concede that Broadway musicals have been distressingly unoriginal of late, being largely uninspired rehashes of movies and biographies of music icons.
So it was eye-opening to encounter Maybe Happy Ending, a truly novel tale of romance between a pair of robots that originated in South Korea, of all places. Part rom-com and part sci-fi, it has a pleasant score by Will Aronson and Hue Park, but none of the pumped-up bombast that is also ruling the musical theater of late.
Add in two winning performances by Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen, and crisp, inventive direction by Michael Arden and you have — although it is still early in the season — the front runner for the Best Musical Tony Award.