29 June 2025
“We are putting sails on this place so sit back and let us take you far, far away…”
Jonathan Groff enters on an elevator trap, rising through the centre of an 11-strong, smokin’ hot big band in full flight.
He’s wearing the first of several beautiful period suits designed by multi Tony winner Catherine Zuber (I lusted after all his costumes!!) and singing into a cool metallic retro microphone.
The Circle in the Square theatre – “this basement beneath Wicked” – has been transformed by set design Derek McLane into a stunning art deco-inspired period nightclub, echoing the Sands or Copacabana, complete with floor-level cabaret seating for the lucky few who desire the most interaction with the star.
“Hi, I am Jonathan Groff and tonight I am your Bobby Darin” he announces, immediately breaking the fourth wall with an ear-to-ear grin and a twinkle in his eye. Spotting a young gay couple seated at the first table he asks them, “are you a couple?” They shrug their shoulders in a non committal way. “Well, let’s see at the end of the show!” And with that he’s off, running around the room and up and down the walk ways, dancing on top of tables, warmly embracing young girls and mums, sending everyone he interacts with into a state of delirium, all the while delivering the opening number, Steve Allen’s brassy “This Could Be the Start of Something”, with polish and élan. He grabs the entire audience by the lapels, knocks one song after another out of the park, and doesn’t let go for 2 ½ hours. And we are completely under his spell.
Frank Sinatra famously said of his Rat Pack compadre, Sammy Davis, Jr, “He goes to the refrigerator for a snack, opens the door, and when that light hits him, he does 45 minutes of his act!” Sammy was a showman par excellence, born to entertain, who lived to make any audience happy. On the evidence of this red-hot bio musical, Mr Groff – fresh from his Tony Award for Merrily We Roll Along last season and just missing out on a second successive award for this tour-de-force performance to his Glee co-star Darren Cross – is Sammy’s heir apparent as Broadway’s new go-to Mr Song and Dance Man. A new Greatest Showman is born.
Bobby Darin, who died tragically young aged just 37 after suffering childhood bouts with rheumatic fever, was a singer, songwriter, and actor who became a major star in the late 1950s and ’60s but today is not classed as a legend. Known for his incredible versatility, Darin moved seamlessly between genres and mediums, earning acclaim for his singing, performing, and acting chops. His most famous songs include his breakout single “Splish Splash,” “Dream Lover”, “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea”.
Born in East Harlem in 1936, Darin had the odds stacked against him from the get-go. Frequent bouts of rheumatic fever left the kid’s heart so weakened that one childhood doctor predicted a lifespan of just 16 years. Darin, encouraged by his supportive, hardboiled ex-vaudeville singer mother Polly (Michele Pawk – terrific), determines to live life fast, cramming in as much success as his limited time will allow. He starts as a songwriter, earning some success copying the styles of whoever happens to have a hit at the moment.
Developed and directed by Tony Award winner Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge, Beetlejuice, David Byrne’s American Utopia, Here Lies Love) with a book by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, Just in Time reflects Bobby Darin’s deep admiration for classic showmen by fully embracing the performance styles he idolised. It is a razzle dazzle triumph,
In a witty script that draws explicit comparisons between the star and his subject, Mr Groff compares himself repeatedly to Darin and reveals that as a kid growing up in rural Pennsylvania, Amish country, all he wanted to do was entertain, to sing and dance and bring joy as “a child twirling in my mother’s heels, listening to my father’s records. I never would’ve guessed I’d have anything in common with him, the playboy crooner and me in Mom’s pumps, but turns out I do. He loved – [gestures back and forth between himself and the audience] – this. It was the only relationship he was any good at. Honestly? Same.”
Mr Groff brings the house down when he declares he is a “wet” actor – he spits when he sings and sweat pours down his face and flicks off his hair and fingers in the more energetic numbers – it’s a phenomenon known in the biz as “The Groff Juice”. He then sends the temperature in the room soaring revealing himself in a large bath sporting just a tiny pair of retro swimming bathers and holding a giant yellow plastic duck (miniature show-branded bath time ducks are avavailable at the merch stand) as he performs “Splish Splash”, sweating and spitting, a-splishin’ and a-splashin’. Later, he skilfully plays the piano, drums, and rocks a xylophone in “Multiplication” – all skills learned just for this show.
The rest of the cast play family members, colleagues and famous loves including singer Connie Francis and actress Sandra Dee. But Just in Time is 100% The Jonathan Groff Show, and it elevates him from highly competent and reliable Musical Theatre actor (Hamilton, Spring Awakening, Little Shop of Horrors) to bonafide star – the same thing happened to Liza Minnelli with Cabaret, and Hugh Jackman playing Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. Groff actually embodies the give-it-all stage style displayed by Ms Minnelli in her prime, here we watch spellbound as, song by song and dance by dance, a stage performer of the highest order blossoms before our eyes.
At the end of the show the star eulogises his subject one final time: “Doing this was when Bobby felt the most alive,” he says. “Honestly? Same. This can only happen in this room, right now, with you, and it’ll never happen quite the same way again.”
I was blessed to see 11 Broadway shows in just 7 days, on my recent New York trip but this show is the very best that Broadway currently offers. If you’re coming to New York to see theatre, put this slice of solid gold entertainment at the very top of your must-see list.
