Well, at least the Rockettes get to take the final bow.
Those glamorous chorines, with their skyscraper legs flapping away, are a New York institution worth cherishing. So the prospect of a few more weeks of work for the hard-working, high-kicking women in the line makes you want to root for the “New York Spring Spectacular,” a lavish new tourist-baiting entertainment being presented at Radio City Music Hall, itself another cherished city institution. When those beautifully poised women with lithe legs and supersize smiles came forward for their final bow, I was as pleased as anyone else to pay them their due.
Sadly, little else in this gaudy orgy of civic hype made me smile. On the contrary, this numbingly overblown 90-minute infomercial for the city that never sleeps threatened to send me into a waking coma. Imagine having the Empire State Building stuffed down your gullet, floor by floor, and you’ll get some sense of this production’s relentless promotional fervor.
Aside from a few brief appearances by the Easter bunny, and a finale set to Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade,” the titular season doesn’t feature very prominently in the show, which is probably just as well, since spring doesn’t seem to be grabbing the spotlight too vigorously itself this year in New York.
Of spectacle, however, there is much.
Imposing sets combine digital video with traditional scenery to recreate, with astonishing verisimilitude, all the pit stops on a standard tour of the city, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Central Park to the Statue of Liberty. There is a 3-D video sequence, as in the Christmas show, that’s suitably dazzling while reminding us that before Europeans colonized the city, there were other people living here. Wristbands emblazoned with the Chase logo (the show’s presenter) are handed out; these flash with different colored lights at various points, turning us all into human sparklers.
Often being dwarfed by all of this high-tech gadgetry is something like a Broadway musical, thin on story but thick with splashy production numbers and starring a game Laura Benanti, veteran of many a real Broadway show (and the delicious television soap “Nashville”), and Derek Hough, the boy-band-pretty dancer and regular on the hit series “Dancing With the Stars.” (Mr. Hough’s autobiography can be purchased from the well-stocked concession stands.)
The whole shebang has been perpetrated — sorry, I mean choreographed and directed — by Warren Carlyle (“After Midnight”), along with the “creative directors” Diane Paulus and Randy Weiner. The moderately insipid text is written by Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”), and the producer is Harvey Weinstein. (Mr. Weinstein’s Broadway musical “Finding Neverland,” directed by Ms. Paulus, is promoted both onstage and in the downstairs lobby.)
The plot driving all the spectacularness appropriately if inadvertently enshrines New York as the national capital of income inequality. Ms. Benanti plays a rapacious (but kinda sweet) Internet zillionaire named Jenna who has decided to buy up and digitize (somehow) a small tour business being run by a friendly old fellow named Bernie (Lenny Wolpe).
Apparently this news doesn’t sit well with God, who sends an angelic emissary in the form of Mr. Hough to make Jenna see the error of her ways. (Why God should be so interested in the fate of Bernie, when the world is rife with disorder, is an unanswered question.) Anyway, Jack, as this earthbound angel is called, accompanies Jenna and her assistant (Jared Grimes) on what may be the last of Bernie’s tours before he’s run out of the business. The idea is that Jenna will be so charmed by Bernie’s hands-on approach that she’ll reconsider.
So away we go, to the aforementioned destinations, where city dwellers frolic and dance and dance and frolic some more. At the Temple of Dendur, the Rockettes make like supernumeraries from a dusty production of “Aida,” striking hieroglyphic poses in Egyptian attire. In the park, they dance with colorful umbrellas under a real live shower, to “Singin’ in the Rain,” naturally, with Mr. Hough tapping away alongside them.
Atop the Empire State Building, Jenna and Jack warm to each other in a ballroom dancing sequence set to “The Way You Look Tonight,” while aerialists flit above them. I have forgotten precisely why Jenna bursts into “I Could Have Danced All Night” early in the show — it seems unlikely that web moguls, even those named Jenna, would make a habit of this — but she does, which gives Ms. Benanti a nice opportunity to show off her crystalline soprano.
Making video or vocal appearances are a host of celebrated city dwellers. Whoopi Goldberg lends her familiar rasp to Lady Liberty, and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler crack wise as the lions outside the library on Fifth Avenue. (These giant talking puppets are among the show’s more impressive effects.) Looming above us on HD video screens are any number of other New York luminaries, including sports stars featured in a long sequence hyping the city’s teams.
Or rather some of them: The Rangers and the Knicks are prominently featured, as are the Yankees and the Giants. (Both the Rangers and the Giants are owned by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which also owns Radio City and is presenting this show along with Weinstein Live Entertainment.) Tough luck, Mets, Nets, Jets, all barely glimpsed in video montage.
A blur of clips from movies set in New York seems pretty superfluous, but perhaps most bizarre is an elaborate sequence devoted to the fashion industry, with the Rockettes swanning down a runway while photographers snap away, and Diane von Furstenberg, Isaac Mizrahi and Zac Posen delivering bland talking-head testimonials.
The ample music score includes a fairly predictable array of New York-themed songs. “New York, New York” is, of course, all but inevitable. The lead performers also sing a series of forgettable original compositions by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, the composer-lyricists of guess which soon-to-open Broadway musical? (That would be “Finding Neverland.”)
We are also reminded, more than once, of the glory of Radio City itself, where the saga of Jack and Jenna and Bernie finally resolves itself. The auditorium, we are told, seats some 6,000 people. That’s 6,000 people who, ahem, are already in New York! Having managed to find their way to Radio City, might they not be expected to know of the city’s other celebrated attractions? True, the Rockettes cannot be seen anywhere else, and their precision-drilled dancing never fails to delight. Funnily enough, the only bit in the show that felt like an authentic New York moment derived from a rare Rockette gaffe. During that singing-in-the-rain sequence, one dancer’s umbrella got mangled, as umbrellas in a city storm so often do, leaving a couple of naked spokes poking out.
This little snapshot of real city life could only have been improved if she had tossed the thing in a trash can piled with a dozen others, and tapped off the stage in soggy irritation.
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