I have now seen nine shows on this trip and the main thing they have in common is that they all received standing ovations. And the proof that a Broadway audience will give a standing O to anything is the new musical I saw Thursday night, It Shoulda Been You.
Its story, such as it is, concerns a wedding between a Jewish girl and a gentile guy who tries to endear himself by using Yiddish phrases, all pronounced badly. That is the level of the show’s humor.
You could call it a musical Abie’s Irish Rose, the 1922 stage comedy that began the ethnic star-crossed lovers formula. But It Shoulda Been You has a plot twist — I admit I didn’t see coming — that definitely makes the story up-to-date.
Anyway, nothing goes as planned at the wedding, in part because the former boyfriend (Josh Grisetti) of the bride (Sierra Boggess) arrives uninvited and tries to prevent the nuptials from happening. And no, whether or not he succeeds has little to do with the plot twist.
It Shoulda Been You does have an attention-getting cast. Tyne Daly and Harriet Harris play the warring mothers of the bride and groom. Chip Zien is father to the bride and the groom is David Burtka (probably best known for being Neil Patrick Harris’s husband offstage).
Even if we agree that there is a lot of talent onstage, they cannot hide the fact that the material is awfully sitcom and the score by Broadway rookies Brian Hargrove and Barbara Anselmi is painfully uninspired.
But somehow the show gathered 14 producers — both individuals and corporate entities — who believe in it, and maybe they will keep it running long enough to get the title so well-known that regional theaters in search of a relatively inexpensive musical with a short, but not short enough, running time will produce it.
If so, we probably have not heard the last of It Shoulda Been You. Alas.
Next up: The epic two-part Royal Shakespeare Company drama, Wolf Hall.