We could see "Boop"
An ode to Jasmine Amy Rogers and the magic of being "Boop"-pilled.
I’m making a prediction here: The two towering diva performances of Audra McDonald in Gypsy and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard will cancel each other out, as will Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard in Death Becomes Her, and Jasmine Amy Rogers will take home the Tony Award for Best Actress in Musical. How confident am I in this take? Not very—it’s more wishful thinking than anything else, but if I’m wrong, I’ll at least be wrong quickly. To be clear, all of these women are worthy in their own way. This was a great season for actresses acting, and Audra in particular is doing something extraordinary as Mama Rose. And yet! I want this for Jasmine Amy Rogers. I feel like she deserves it. And I really think she could win.
Boop! The Musical is a show I went into with ample uncertainty given my less-than-positive feelings about IP-driven musicals (even if the IP in this case is a 95-year-old animated character who has faded from the public consciousness over the last few decades). I’d heard very mixed things, though I will say that the people I trust the most insisted it’s secretly great. I figured that if I did end up liking it, it would take a while to get on its wavelength. Imagine my surprise when I fell in love pretty instantly—and much of that credit goes to Jasmine Amy Rogers, who is so instantly winning that it’s kind of impossible not to embrace the entire endeavor.
I’ll get back to her in a minute. I do want to offer some praise to Boop as a whole, because I feel like pinning all of the show’s success on Rogers isn’t fair to the other great things about it. The Barbie-coded approach of bringing Betty Boop to the 21st century is a clever one, and it’s something the musical does well, without getting overly mired in predictable fish-out-of-water mishaps. The score—music by Foster and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead—doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but its catchy, throwback style is better than it’s been given credit for. It’s also well matched to Jerry Mitchell’s Tony-nominated choreography. (With all due respect to Buena Vista Social Club, he should win.) Speaking of nominations, Gregg Barnes should also pick up the Tony for costume design, if only for the Act Two opener “Where Is Betty?” and the costumes that are in vibrant color on one side and black-and-white on the other.
Much of Boop is broad, yes, but it’s deliberate and self-aware—and not in that grating meta way where you lose any semblance of sincerity. This is obviously a very sincere show, one that takes itself the right amount of seriously. It’s a credit to Mitchell’s direction and the entire cast that Boop maintains just the right tone throughout. There’s a real emotional core to Betty’s desire for self-actualization, but Boop never forgets that it’s based on cartoons. Songs like “Sunlight” and “My Hero” give the show enough pathos to take these characters seriously, and then we can go back to the silly stuff and Pudgy the dog. (Pudgy is not nominated for a Tony, nor is his puppeteer Phillip Huber. Where is justice?)
But OK: Jasmine Amy Rogers, my Best Actress in a Musical winner and the reason I felt compelled to write this in the first place. She is far and away the best thing about Boop—a show I, again, really like!—and this is the kind of star-making performance that deserves to be recognized. Everything about her portrayal of the title character is perfectly pitched. She’s believably straight out of a cartoon, but never one-note. She manages to evoke the distinctive sound of Betty’s voice in a way that’s somehow never grating. There are so many ways this could have gone wrong, and instead Rogers is the glue that holds it all together. It’s a towering achievement, and while I’m confident she will have a long career with ample opportunities for Tonys down the line, I’d love to see her awarded now. And I say that as someone who generally prefers to see legends showered with trophies over newcomers, which is not me being ageist and more me still recovering from Mikey Madison getting the Oscar over Demi Moore.
I want Rogers to win because I think she deserves to win, but also because I think it could give Boop the boost that it needs to stay open. Right now, it’s fighting an uphill battle. I’ve checked the Broadway grosses, and the only show with a lower average ticket price is Real Women Have Curves. (Give the always wonderful Justina Machado a Tony, and keep that open, too!) Real Women Have Curves, however, will be performing at the ceremony, while Boop will not. We need people to get a sense of what Boop has to offer, and I’m not sure Hannah Solow’s incredible viral TikTok is enough—maybe a Rogers win would do it. There is real theater magic and joy in this show, which is so much better than the thoughtless brand extension it could have been. I’d just love for audiences to have many more chances to see that.
Boop! The Musical is at the Broadhurst Theatre. Buy tickets here.
It's so good to see an intelligent review of a Broadway show on Substack.