It Shoulda Been You – Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York

Chip Zien, Sierra Boggess and Tyne Daly in It Shoulda Been You at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus

It Shoulda Been You continues at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York.

Star rating: 2 stars ★ ★

As the curtain rises on It Shoulda Been You, an overweight woman wearing a bridal veil sings of her doubts about the forthcoming wedding. But as we quickly learn, it’s not she, Jenny, who’s getting married, but her slim younger sister, Rebecca, while Jenny has been working like a dog making the arrangements under the thumb of their bullying mother.

This little twist is the first of many that make up this sitcom of a musical, which rehashes the old-timey comedy of mixed-faith marriages. For starters, let’s remember Abie’s Irish Rose, that record-breaking Broadway hit of the 1920s. This time around, though, the bride is Jewish, the groom gentile. Along with all the hit-and-miss laughs this engenders, script and lyric writer Brian Hargrove aims for contemporary resonance with such plot developments as gay marriage, pre-nuptial agreements, body image and concern as to whether the wedding celebration will have a proper panini station. It’s an uneasy mix.

Besides the panini station, the wedding day is fraught with crises, one of the major ones being the uninvited arrival of Marty Kaufman, Rebecca’s ex-boyfriend (or at least we’re led to believe he’s her old boyfriend). Nevertheless, Marty is welcomed joyously by Rebecca’s parents, who consider him part of the family and actually prefer him to Rebecca’s betrothed. When they gather around him and sing the title song, he is the ‘you’ in ‘It Shoulda Been You’.

Like much of Barbara Anselmi’s plentiful music (she’s also credited with the show’s concept), the number is a bouncy patter song, set over a bright tempo. Her music throughout is particularly noteworthy for setting up clearly the joke-filled lyrics, for better or for worse.

David Hyde Pierce, a winning actor known especially for his long-running appearance on the television sitcom Frasier, makes his Broadway directorial debut here. He also directed the show in its premiere engagement at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey in 2011. He moves his actors knowingly around Anna Louizos’ posh-looking set, which transforms easily into various locales in the hotel – from ballroom to ladies room – where the wedding is taking place. The actors themselves, an assemblage of well-tested talents and names, though, have spotty results in making this over-abundance of overly-calculated hijinks work.

Tyne Daly’s inherent likeability softens the obnoxiousness of the tyrannical mother of the bride, a woman who’s constantly putting down the poor overworked Jenny over her weight and lack of boyfriend. As the groom’s pretentiously soused mother, Harriet Harris puts her comic knowhow into overdrive, managing – sometimes a bit too hard – to squeeze at least a titter or more out of nearly every one of her lines.

Lisa Howard’s Jenny has a lot of sincerity and almost – but not quite – makes palatable the woman’s wallowing in self-pity. Her big-voiced singing, though, wins the audience over, especially when she gets to do some barrelhouse strutting in a number called ‘Jenny’s Blues’.

Sierra Boggess, as Rebecca, also gets to demonstrate roof-raising vocal prowess in her song of self-realisation toward the show’s end. In her luxuriously traditional wedding gown (William Ivey Long did the costumes), she also looks ready to stand atop a wedding cake.

As the groom trying to ingratiate himself with his in-laws, David Burtka works hard but can’t make every one of his oft-repeated Yiddish mispronunciations funny. Who could? He also gets an opportunity to show off some competent soft-shoe in an oddly conceived dance duet with Michael X. Martin, playing the groom’s hapless father.

The plentiful bon mots and asides of the snidely unflappable wedding planner are delivered with lip-smacking aplomb by Edward Hibbert. Montego Glover and Nick Spangler gamely portray the wedding couple’s best friends, who get to sing their lungs out in their duet dedicated to the newlyweds, ‘Love You Till the Day (you die)’.

The most easily acceptable members of the dramatis personae are Josh Grisetti’s ingenuous Marty and Chip Zien’s affectionate father of the bride. Completing the relatively compact cast (for a Broadway musical) are Anne L. Nathan and Adam Heller, doubling as hotel employees and wedding guest relatives.

It Shoulda Been You is the kind of enterprise that will make you either groan or grin, maybe both. Whatever, as one of its characters might say, “At Broadway prices, it shoulda been better.”

Ron Cohen

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