Review: The Heart of Rock and Roll Beats Us Into Submission With High Spirits

It turns out Rock of Ages‘s closing in 2015 wasn’t the last gasp of ’80s nostalgia on Broadway. The new jukebox musical The Heart of Rock and Roll offers us another 1987-set original story, this one featuring the songs of Huey Lewis and the News. (That makes two musicals on Broadway right now featuring his 1985 hit “The Power of Love,” with Back to the Future: The Musical is still running a few blocks away.) I walked into the James Earl Jones Theatre in a cynical frame of mind, so imagine my surprise when I came out feeling buzzed, entertained…and slightly ashamed at how easily I swallowed this package.

The story book writer Jonathan A. Abrams and co-scenarist Tyler Mitchell have cooked up certainly isn’t anything special. Bobby (Corey Cott), a former rock singer and guitarist who abandoned his dreams of stardom and is haplessly trying to rise up the ranks at a cardboard box factory in Milwaukee, eventually finds himself torn between continuing his ascent up the corporate ladder and chasing after an opportunity to finally achieve musical stardom. That dilemma dovetails with the romantic one faced by Cassandra (McKenzie Kurtz), the daughter of the box factory’s CEO, Stone (John Dossett), and Bobby’s boss. For her, it’s the choice between Tucker (Billy Harrigan Tighe), the ex she reconnects with, and Bobby, who helps her find her professional confidence. Given that Tucker is characterized as a smarmy yuppie caricature from the start, it’s a given whom the audience will root for.

But then, story is rarely the selling point of jukebox musicals like these — a point Abrams seems very much aware of. The idea of setting the action in and around a cardboard box factory, of all places, suggests a parodic acknowledgment of just how cookie-cutter plots like these often are. That winking quality seeps into much of the comic dialogue. Among other things, Abrams plays fast and loose with the ’80s references, even evoking the iconic John Cusack boom box scene in Say Anything… (two years after 1987) and the business-card comparison gag in American Psycho (a brutal satire of ’80s yuppie culture published in 1991). Such bits are enough to infuse the show with the sense that none of it is meant to be taken too seriously.

Amid a Broadway landscape that includes the likes of Hamilton, Hadestown, Six, and others, it’s rather perverse to see a show that not only appears to swallow certain Reagan-era myths about capitalistic success as a worthy goal, but also foregrounds the travails of two white cis hetero characters while relegating minorities to sidekick roles. Even then, though, Abrams finds ways to lightly tweak such retro clichés. Galling as it is that Bobby’s best friend at work is a human-resources person named Roz (Tamika Lawrence) — thereby reinforcing the lie that HR exists to help its employees — the fact that she’s not only Black but [light spoiler alert] queer and a fellow former aspiring rock star sets things up for a finale that’s relatively forward-thinking.

Huey Lewis’s hits are possibly too rooted in their time to withstand much progressive subversion. (He’s written one new song for the show titled “Be Someone.”) Still, there’s no denying his way with catchy hooks, ensuring songs like “Hip to Be Square,” “I Want a New Drug,” the title song, and more have endured. So it is with The Heart of Rock and Roll, an object demonstration of how much sheer gusto and a modicum of wit can steamroll over intellectual objections.

Director Gordon Greenberg brings to this production the same sense of anything-goes invention that he brought off-Broadway to Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors last year. Choreographer Lorin Latarro’s use of bubble wrap in “Workin’ for a Livin'” and a nightmare ballet evoking Cassandra’s fears of middle-class conformity are highlights. Jen Caprio’s costume design and Nikiya Mathis’s hair, wig, and makeup design scream the ’80s without exaggeration. Lighting designer Japhy Weideman brings much flash to Derek McLane’s relatively spare set and all its moving parts. Every word is audible in John Shivers’s sound design amid Brian Usifer’s arena-rock orchestrations.

Above all, the large cast beats us into submission with their soaring voices and high spirits. Cott is so genuinely earnest as Bobby that it’s easy to overlook how thin the character is; same with Kurtz as the chipper and awkward Cassandra. Of the many supporting performers, Lawrence stands out as the no-nonsense Roz, though Dossett also brings unexpected shades of dignity and melancholy as Cassandra’s father. Like the best junk food, you won’t remember much about The Heart of Rock and Roll afterward, but at least you’ll have felt you had a fun time.