Review - SpongeBob SquarePants, the Musical

wearing a SpongeBob shirt with a SpongeBob cake

I don't know why I waited until almost the end of the run to see SpongeBob SquarePants, the Broadway Musical.  For some reason, even though I know a few people on the creative team, I just didn't make the effort to get there.  Just one of those things, I guess.  But I finally went to see it, about two weeks before it closes.  And, boy, am I glad I did.  I had a blast.

I guess I should say up front that I used to watch SpongeBob with my sweetheart when he was a little guy.  We watched it A LOT.  So I'm familiar with the show and with the characters.  I've listened to the cast album of the Broadway musical several times and while listening to it, I could feel a tone shift caused by all of the songs being written by different people.  But in the theater, I didn't notice that at all.  Tom Kitt has done a masterful job of arranging the score and the show is beautifully directed so that it doesn't seem like a hodgepodge of music at all.  Of course, some songs are better than others, but it's like that in most musicals, yes?

photo credit: Joan Marcus

The production is cast with obscenely talented young performers, who both embody the characters as we experience them on tv and also turn them into distinct individuals.  The boy who plays SpongeBob, Ethan Slater, is really one of the hardest working gents in show business.  He is WORKING it out there and he has got charm to spare.  He was really terrific - I look forward to seeing what he does next.  I greatly enjoyed the entire cast, but give a special shout out to Wesley Taylor, who was having entirely too much fun as the evil Plankton.

I took this one, pre-show

The set, costumes and lights are fantastic - they're both wonderfully futuristic and also charmingly homespun.  The way the two are combined is grand.  The plot is minimal - Bikini Bottom's long-dormant volcano is going to erupt and the world will end the next day.  So...big stakes!  The show moves briskly through the obstacles; every character gets to shine; we see how optimism, friendship and cooperation are the best way to work, and science (via the woman of color; well, ok, her character is actually a squirrel) saves the day.  Not a bad moral to the story.  The book by Kyle Jarrow is laugh-out-loud funny and also really clever.  He does a wonderful job of making things that can seem adult (xenophobia, rotten politicians) understandable for even the smallest audience members.  I had a smile on my face for practically the entire show.  The random pirate sightings were fun - the second act opener was a ode to pirates, which cracked me up.  There was even a Pittsburgh Pirate, ha ha. 

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

Oh, and I should also mention the completely superfluous, but utterly fantastic, tap number performed by Gavin Lee as Squidward, SpongeBob's glass-is-half-empty neighbor.  Funnily enough, the number starts off because Squidward is trying to convince himself he's not a loser.  After Straight White Men showed how painful the word 'loser' can be, it was strange to see it offered up again in a goofy musical.  But watching Squidward give himself confidence had to be inspiring to all the kids in the audience.  And they ate his performance right up.  All of the kids in the theater seemed to love the entire production.  I think I was also sitting near a group of perhaps developmentally disabled adults.  They loved the show, too, especially the interaction with the cast members when they danced up and down the aisles.  There was a lot of 'you can do it, SpongeBob!' being shouted in the theater throughout the afternoon and it was touching.  I admit that tears came to my eyes a couple of times - the show was so sweet and so lovely to look at, the kids were so incredibly talented, and I was also reminded of the fact that my sweetheart is too grown-up to watch SpongeBob with me anymore.  I wish he and I could've seen this show together, though that may have been too much for my sentimental self to handle...

SpongeBob SquarePants, the Broadway Musical closes in a couple of weeks.  Discounts are available.  If you want to smile and enjoy how fanciful and imaginative theater can be, I think you should try to check this show out.