It’s rare to see a Broadway show that improves over time. Just in Time, the year-old biomusical about mid-20th-century crooner Bobby Darin, has emerged as a sprightly and delightful vehicle for its versatile and virile new leading man, Jeremy Jordan. The original production‘s Bobby, Jonathan Groff, was fresh off his Tony win for Merrily We Roll Along when he opened the show last spring, and he wowed the critics and audiences by displaying his talent as an old-fashioned song-and-dance man, walking us through the life of an ambitious showman who made his name with late-’50s pop hits like “Splish Splash” and “Dream Lover.”
Jordan, like Groff a 41-year-old lyric tenor and Broadway veteran with a big belt and a sturdy stage presence, brings a different energy to the role. Groff approached the show as a kind of winsome master-of-ceremonies in the Hugh Jackman mold, kicking off the show with a first-person riff about how he was a gay kid from Pennsylvania Amish country who identified with Darin by only feeling at home on the stage. But Jordan, best known for playing plucky strivers in musicals like Newsies and The Great Gatsby, better conveys Darin’s almost single-minded ambition and prickliness in personal relationships. (His opening monologue nods to his upbringing as a shy kid in Corpus Christi, Texas, who had to learn how to keep his chin up and look up into the spotlight.)
With his signature shoulder shrugs and tongue-out head turns, Jordan moves through his dance routines with a cool-cat confidence and an are-we-having-fun-yet gameness. His singing is bold and bright, and he brings his experience in cabaret to bear with slight shifts in intonation on tunes like “Mack the Knife” and “Once in a Lifetime.” He makes the songs his own. Jordan’s Darin also gives a stronger sense of a man in a hurry to make an impact on the world, before the weak heart he developed from childhood bouts of rheumatic fever could claim him. (Darin died in 1973 at age 37 days after undergoing a second round of open-heart surgeries.) Jordan seems more comfortable exploring Darin’s darker side: his volatile flare-ups with friends, business partners, his doting older sister (Emily Bergl), and his wife, Sandra Dee (Carrie St. Louis), whom he dumps after dragging her and their young son on a never-ending series of concert tours. While Groff seemed to glide over these aspects of the role, as if performing soft shoe on Darin’s flaws, Jordan lets them sink in so we can appreciate an individual with complications as deep as his talent.
Even a year after the show’s opening, much of the original cast remains intact. Newcomers include Debbie Gravitte as Darin’s beloved former vaudeville-performer mom and the two actresses playing the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer‘s A-list loves, who belt out their respective stars’ signature tunes with real depth and power. Olivia Holt brings a girl-next-door energy to Connie Francis, the “Who’s Sorry Now?” hitmaker for whom Darin wrote several bubblegum-pop tunes while both were still in their teens. And St. Louis glistens as Dee, the former child actress whom he met on the set of his first movie in 1960 — leading to a rocky marriage as she became a glorified roadie, with their only child in tow. (The show skips Darin’s second wife, a former legal secretary whom he divorced just weeks before his death.)
Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver’s script (based on a concept by Ted Chapin) remains a weak element. It’s not that Darin led a boring life, but the script continually underplays details that might have given the drama more heft. We learn only in passing about his political ambitions and association with Robert F. Kennedy (he was present at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel when the Democratic presidential front-runner was assassinated in 1968). More puzzling is an almost offhand revelation about the tight-knit family that raised him in East Harlem. And his song catalog, include his poppy covers of older tunes like “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea,” is notably thin — a fact that stands out during the curtain-call medley.
The polish of the production and the performances go a long way to masking the by-the-numbers nature of the storytelling. Director Alex Timbers treats the whole Circle in the Square auditorium as an updated version of Darin’s beloved Copacabana, with multiple costume changes (designed by Catherine Zuber) and Justin Townsend’s colorful lighting accentuating Derek McLane’s classic-nightclub set design. He also has a savvy sense of pacing, rushing through the story beats so we can barely register the flaws. Of course, this only works because Jordan and his talented co-stars sell the heck out of the material. And Just in Time feels rejuvenated by a star who is tailor-made to play Bobby Darin, a legend with a golden voice, a hard-charging style, and charm to spare. ★★★★☆
JUST IN TIME
Circle in the Square, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through Oct. 16 for $69 to $599