*
Bombshell, the new musical about Marilyn Monroe, has a certain negative stink on it from events that happened during its development in Season One (and the first parts of Season Two) of NBC's "Smash." Events such as: A Hollywood star being poisoned by a spiked smoothie and later claiming that the director sexually harassed her; the librettist sleeping with the show's leading man, breaking up her marriage; the producing reins shifting in some cryptic personal-legal negotiation involving husband-and-wife producers, their daughter, lawyers, a district attorney and others too obscure to name; the young starlet quitting the lead role of Marilyn in favor of a grungy downtown rock musical called Hit List; the Tony-winning director quitting the show for the same grungy downtown rock musical; the composer taking over as director. You know, just like what happens with most Broadway shows. (These are probably roughly the same events that happened with Ankles Aweigh back in 1955.)
Photo by Will Hart/NBC |
The Times has passed on a Bombshell feature, Agnes says. But there's a good story here, no? Eileen is old pals with the Arts and Leisure Editor, Richard Francis, played by Jamey Sheridan. Eileen bursts into his office in a scene that wouldn't happen in real life at the Times fortress at 41st Street and Eighth Avenue. Security would have retained her at the door. Richard says Bombshell is not material for the Times, unless there's a fresh angle. It gives Eileen an idea that surfaces later in the episode: Why not get Leigh Conroy to come out of retirement to play the pivotal role of Marilyn's mother? (And let's not inform our lead, Ivy, whose past with mom is full of tension! What?) Peters is set to show up in next week's episode, and if you have the rather smashing soundtrack album to "Smash," called "Bombshell: The New Marilyn Musical From 'Smash,'" you know that the recording — featuring the songs of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman — offers a serious spoiler.
Photo by Will Hart/NBC |
The always refreshing Leslie Odom, Jr. returns to the series in this episode, as Tom's ex-boyfriend, Sam, Ivy's bestie — a Bombshell ensemble member who ended up snagging a principal role in the super-hot national tour of The Book of Mormon. (He's got a week off, so he's visiting New York.) When Sam took the job, Tom decided their relationship was over. Sam, we learn, is not happy on the road (mostly because "Smash" is committed to the idea that any artistic expression outside of New York is a humiliating waste of time — see last week's "Smash" Report about Manhattan Theatre Workshop artistic director Scott Nichols [Rent's Jesse L. Martin] complaining about regional theatre as a kind of purgatory).
Tom decides as director that he's going to create a specialty principal role for Sam — Nat King Cole, no less. Sam quits his job in The Book of Mormon! Sam and Tom sleep together naked! And then Tom, with some advice from frenemy director Derek (Jack Davenport), realizes he cannot cast Sam in the show! Nat King Cole meeting Marilyn and JFK is not right for the show. Tom cannot be a pal to all. He has to set those boundaries. Sorry, Sam.
Photo by Craig Blankenhorn/NBC |
This business of having some power and some choices in your career — and being perceived as being able to employ your friends — is the most authentic aspect of this week's episode. Theatre is a world of hungry freelancers. Directors, playwrights and music-directors often struggle with the tension of friends circling their projects, and sometimes that tension prompts those leaders to pull away from their old community. Those not in power do indeed often have irrational expectations from those in power, just as there is sometimes irrational paranoia from directors who constantly think that everybody wants them. It tears some friendships apart. Or worse, it remains an itchy scab that is picked throughout the course of a professional/personal lifetime. (At a series of dinner parties, you look at your pal across a crowded room and think: "Why didn't he let me sing in that reading?" or "Why didn't he cast me as Dinky in Ankles Aweigh?" or "How come I wasn't asked to sing on that demo?")
Some grown-ups end up processing it with grace and viewing their friend's (perceived) power as a fact of life that might one day swing in favor of a happy solution — maybe that friend will cast you when the time is right. Or maybe you should just concentrate on being excellent and finding work in the great, wide theatre community. There is apparently a gap in the national-touring cast of The Book of Mormon.
Photo by Will Hart/NBC |
Photo by Will Hart/NBC |
NAT AND SAMMY AND LESLIE: Shaiman and Wittman, channeling the sanitized Cold War pop of Sammy Cahn, are represented by the number called "(Let's Start) Tomorrow Tonight," which is also heard on that terrific "Smash" soundtrack. It occurs to us that it's possible that if Shaiman and Wittman's Bombshell score had been released as a concept album a decade ago, it would be on Broadway by now. The song is a trunk song by Tom and Julia for a stalled show about Las Vegas in the 1960s. At Tom's cast party, Ivy implores, "Everyone wants to sing!," and Tom plays the number (which boyfriend Sam previously knew). Sam sings and dances around the apartment — part Nat King Cole, part Sammy Davis, Jr., with Wesley Taylor as chorus boy Bobby and Savannah Wise as chorus girl Jessica providing backup. It's just the sort of heightened showbiz whimsy — see the "I Love Louisa" sequence from M-G-M's "The Band Wagon" — that you want from "Smash." This kind of thing reportedly did happen at the cocktail parties of Jule Styne, where you imagine that the words "Stop talking — just sing!" were spoken over the clink of ice. More, please.
Read The "Smash" Report columns that documented Season One here.
(Kenneth Jones is managing editor of Playbill.com. Follow him on Twitter @PlaybillKenneth.)