HONEYMOON IN VEGAS | This Week in New York

Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $69-$152
www.honeymoonbroadway.com

Perhaps what happens in Hollywood should stay in Hollywood. Musical adaptations of Hollywood dramas continue to flood Broadway, despite the lack of success experienced by such recent fare as The Bridges of Madison County, Big Fish, and Rocky. And now, before we can even think about Doctor Zhivago, An American in Paris, and Finding Neverland, we’ve been pummeled by Honeymoon in Vegas, which arrives on the East Coast smothered in glitz and glamor but ultimately coming up snake eyes. Writer-director Andrew Bergman, who has written and directed The Freshman and Striptease and written or cowritten The In-Laws and Fletch, has transformed his 1992 film into a Broadway musical that draws to an inside straight and falls desperately short. Rob McClure (Chaplin) stars as Jack Singer, a wimpy New Yorker in love with the beautiful Betsy Nolan (Brynn O’Malley); she is ready to get married, but he is terrified by a deathbed curse delivered by his mother, Bea (Nancy Opel), who has forbade him from ever taking a bride, claiming that no woman can love him like she did. Bea, ten years dead by this point, keeps popping up at crucial junctures, like in the middle of Tiffany’s when he’s about to buy a ring for Betsy. Betsy gives Jack an ultimatum, so he suddenly tells Betsy that they should fly immediately to Las Vegas and get married, no matter what his mother demanded. Off they go to Sin City, where Jack, a natural gambler, gets suckered into a poker game organized by the smooth-talking Tommy Korman (Tony Danza), a high-rolling mobster who thinks Betsy is a dead ringer for his late wife. When Jack can’t pay the fifty-eight grand he loses in the game, Tommy says he’ll call it even if he can borrow Betsy for the weekend. Furious at what Jack did, Betsy agrees to the deal, leaving Jack to either fight for her or give her up forever. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a story if Jack just let her walk away, so he is soon off to Hawaii to win back his true love.

Bergman’s 1992 film featured established stars Nicolas Cage as Jack, James Caan as Tommy, Sarah Jessica Parker as Betsy, and Anne Bancroft as Jack’s mother. O’Malley, as the blond Betsty, is the breakout star of the Broadway musical, showing a natural talent for romantic comedy while also displaying a fine voice in such numbers as “Anywhere But Here” and “I’ve Been Thinking.” McClure does an admirable job as Jack, his highlight coming early on in “I Love Betsy.” The eminently likable Danza blows hot and cold, delivering on the mournful ballad “Out of the Sun” and the clever “Come to an Agreement,” but he stands around too much when he’s not involved in the immediate action, and a tap-dancing number was wholly unnecessary. The less said about Opel (Urinetown, Cinderella) in the thankless role of the mother the better. And yes, the Flying Elvises are in the building, but prepare to cringe. Brian C. Hemesath’s costumes are flashy, particularly in the Vegas nightclub scenes, while Denis Jones’s choreography is relatively flat and lifeless. The music and lyrics, by popular and critical darling Jason Robert Brown (The Bridges of Madison County, Parade, The Last Five Years), are, for the most part, surprisingly standard and uninteresting. (“Jump jump / jumpity jump”?) Another surprise was that there was no standing ovation at the end, since audiences seem to jump jump jumpity jump to their feet after most splashy musicals these days, no matter the quality. But maybe they could tell too that this Honeymoon in Vegas is in need of a Haitian divorce.