Boop! The Musical – 29 March 2025

The most interesting and exciting thing about Boop! The Musical is the devotion and commitment to creating a black-and-white cartoon world that is just as interesting and engaging as a high definition, colorful “real” world. The precision of this commitment is reflected in every design element, most strongly in the projection design (Finn Ross) and the costume design (Greg Barnes). The opening scenes showed Betty (Jasmine Amy Rogers)’s life in gray scale, with songs (David Foster/Susan Birkenhead) expressing that being able to be everything means always playing a role you’re cast in and not having an authentic, personal sense of self. The monotony of Betty Boop’s existence comes through clearly, despite a highly impressive sequence where scenic design (David Rockwell), lighting design (Philip S. Rosenberg), illusions design (Skylar Fox) and projection design (Finn Ross) collaborate to show a reality that the book (Bob Martin) later describes as, “being chased” through every imaginable storyline and never having any agency of her own. Betty becomes desperate to leave her seemingly glamorous but actually depressing life on screen and takes Grampy (Stephen DeRosa)’s time machine into a world in color, set today, in 2025.

From here on, the rest of the first act is Betty discovering life in color, from landing at Comic Con and meeting her biggest fan, Trisha (Angelica Hale) to falling in love with Dwayne (Ainsley Melham). This first half is pure joy and smiles, up through the end of “Where I Wanna Be”. After a truly incredible opening number (“Where is Betty?”) in which costume design (Greg Barnes) and choreography (Rachelle Rak/Jon Rua) do an incredible amount of heavy lifting to bring a world in grayscale and a world in color to life side by side. The second act is fraught with some conundrums that ask some meaningful questions through exaggeration and comedic timing when misogynist mayoral candidate Raymond Demarest (Erich Bergen) decides to use Miss Boop as his figurehead and makes inappropriate advances. Betty’s anger boils over and she helps campaign manager Carol Evans (Anastacia McCleskey) turn the press against Raymond and towards Carol as a strong woman of color who actually cares about the people in her city. Along the way, she empowers Trisha to love herself and be her own hero.

It’s a great story of a woman not being chased anymore, but the wrap up negates some of the point. Betty is told that she must go back to her old world. No adequate reason is given, and even though she has just admitted her love to Dwayne, Betty makes no argument and goes where she’s told. Then, when she’s sad back in her black and white world, Grampy and his (relatively) new lover Valentina (Faith Prince) bring her man to visit from the real world. Her happiness is ultimately rescued by a man who makes her see the world in color. It’s a very disappointing end to what is otherwise a wonderful feminist musical. For me, the truly incredible design elements are what make this world alive, fun, and interesting. I’m not certain this material will hold up well in future productions with lower budgets, and on some level I do think it’s destined for schools as a great alternative to Disney shows that has a lot of roles for young character actors (like the film studio director and his lackey, etc.) The piece of this show that elevated it above many contemporaneous shows on Broadway is that sound designer Gareth Owen and his team made sure that every word was clear. These concepts fly by very quickly, as do many of the jokes, and being able to really hear this production, including incredible clarity in the band and instrumental/orchestral moments made a world of difference in my ability to enjoy this production. Boop! The Musical is a feel good story that audiences need to enjoy now, when it’s produced at a high level with high production value and the ability to really create these unique and distinct worlds. When it trickles down the theatre-world pipeline, it just won’t be the same. Broadway is where this show wants to be.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.