Do you remember the Max Fleischer hand-drawn black-and-white animated shorts from the 1930s?
Director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell is hoping you do and are interested in his new musical, Boop!, centered on that spit-curled spitfire kewpie doll, Betty Boop.
Besides harkening back to a Depression-era cartoon celebrity, Boop! takes us back to the days when musicals were sheer entertainment, not art. True, the show gets political in its second act, with themes of female empowerment and self-actualization, but mainly the show aims to be fun and succeeds at that.
In large part that is due to the title performance by Jasmine Amy Rogers, a genuine talent making her Broadway debut. I’m still rooting for Maybe Happy Ending to win the best musical Tony Award, but I enjoyed Boop! a lot.
Next: At last, a play! Tony-nominated Purpose, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, author of last season’s scorching Appropriate.