SMASH
Opening Night: April 10, 2025
Theater: Imperial Theatre
Website: smashbroadway.com
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April 10, 2025
“Smash,” which opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, is more of a who’ll-do-it, and when the big song comes, it’s a killer. But the effect is the same: It’s the great musical comedy no one saw coming.
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April 11, 2025
“Smash” sells the promise of slap-happy Broadway™, but don’t be fooled: Elice and Martin have salted the whole thing with disdain. Contempt is what they must have for actors, writers, influencers, young people in general — all of whom are mocked and flattened into obnoxiously one-dimensional beings in their unsteady and inadequate book.
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April 10, 2025
The sharpness of the production’s cynicism shines through, assisted by the strength of the musical numbers and the all-around stellar performances, which imbue a palpable love of the form with an even stronger frustration with its mechanics.
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April 10, 2025
Hurder shines as a triple-threat of perfect comic timing, stunning vocals, and athletic dance. She expertly maintains vocal stability whether giving high-kicks or being whisked off mid-air by the ensemble in Joshua Bergasse’s showstopping choreography.
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April 10, 2025
For those fans dying for more “Smash” content, this musical will absolutely scratch that (more than seven-year) itch; for those uninitiated, this production offers a high-energy, fun musical comedy with a phenomenal score. Either way, it is, in fact, what you’ve been needing.
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April 10, 2025
I’m a sucker for a self-referential theatrical tale. Give me an All That Jazz or a 42ndStreet and I’m happy. But in the version of Smash that made it to the stage, the magic flickers out.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
With its transition to the stage, Smash finally realizes its full potential as a hilarious, pointed satire that both skewers and celebrates the Great White Way.
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April 10, 2025
It’s hard to judge whose decisions are more misguided: those of the back-stabbing, wacky creators of “Bombshell,” the fictional musical comedy about Marilyn Monroe we see implode, or the very real minds (Robert Greenblatt, Steven Spielberg, Susan Stroman) behind the disaster that is “Smash.”
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April 10, 2025
It’s not that the musical all goes wrong, exactly. With a cast as good as this one – Robyn Hurder, The Prom‘s Brooks Ashmanskas, Krysta Rodriguez, John Behlmann and the invaluable Kristine Nielsen, just for starters – Smash is thoroughly watchable from start to rather overlong finish. Unlike the series, there isn’t the precipitous drop in quality that so alienated many of the original’s early fans. Instead, Smash The Musical starts just well enough, and stays there.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
That quality of surprise, crucial to the best episodes of the TV show, is missing from the new live musical staging, which opened Thursday night at the Imperial Theatre. Especially given the level of talent involved here, the adaptation will be deeply disappointing even for die-hard fans of the source material.
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April 10, 2025
Susan Stroman directs, and she hasn’t been this good with a cast since she brought “The Producers” to the stage over two decades ago. The “Smash” ensemble is every bit as talented as that legendary cast. A wonderful quirk of the direction and book is that the show’s musical numbers are, for the most part, backstage looks at the rehearsal process. Broadway aficionados will love it.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
It also can’t be overstated what a star Hurder is. She’s one of the few legitimate triple threats that we have on Broadway right now, and I felt exhausted on her behalf just watching the opening number and “I Never Met a Wolf Who Didn’t Love to Howl.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
“Smash” may please those in the audience besotted by musical theater and its legends and lore. (There’s a beefcake parade to delight gay fans.) It could prove less enticing to audiences who would prefer to see a straightforward musical rather than a meta-musical about putting on a musical.
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April 10, 2025
Part of the appeal of Bombshell has always been that it had bomb written right into it. To be fair, this production isn’t really a bomb; it doesn’t go hard enough for that. It’s the shell of a bomb.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
Even for a transparently silly musical comedy it’s an absurd premise—leading lady goes nuts but recovers her wits by the end. Still, you can forgive the flimsiness of the book for occasioning so many first-rate comic performances and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s best overall score since Hairspray.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
Without a strong grounding in the source material, this Smash remains unmoored as it pursues a tangle of subplots, character arcs, and framing devices at once.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
What the show seems to be telling us: Yes, “Smash” is a frothy entertainment capitalizing on brand awareness. Isn’t that what you really want?
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
There’s still a lot of really good elements but despite resurrecting the main characters along with some of the songs, it’s a different story now and the sum of its parts do not make a smashing whole.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
Energetically performed by an excellent company, the capably designed and directed show proves to be a busy, cold, facetious and ultimately rueful backstage musical comedy involving some people making a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe.
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April 10, 2025
The concept gives way to more than one cringy moment when it’s obvious that “Smash” itself, directed here by Susan Stroman, is in trouble. True to the spirit of its source material, and leveraging Monroe as little more than a totem, the show stalls out delivering misguided fan service in flat sitcom rhythms.
READ THE REVIEWApril 10, 2025
Both the haters and the defenders get the last laugh. A real-life musical celebrating willful delusion in the name of Broadway is perhaps the best possible tribute to the Smash of yore, and an enjoyable two-and-a-half hours at the theater for everyone else.
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