Boop! The Musical

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Born as a hybrid anachronism, Betty Boop, that plucky, shrill, and macrocephalic flapper, began animated life in the 1930 Max Fleischer short “Dizzy Dishes” as an anthropomorphized dog, somewhat out of time and species with her human Jazz Age influences. Though, weirdly, Betty’s gartered gams were there from the beginning, but let’s not judge the curious proclivities of any adults seeking a little risqué escapism while suffering through the onset of the Great Depression. Equally odd is that it’s taken almost a century for the bobbed icon to grace a Broadway stage, when many, many, many decades ago such a lucrative opportunity could have settled huge bar tabs for certain perpetually pickled members of the Algonquin Round Table.

So, instead of a bygone theatrical take guided by the writing talents of, say, George S. Kaufman, we have…well, Broadway isn’t what it used to be. Still, by modern standards, Boop! The Musical, doesn’t exactly disappoint, at least not that frequently, thanks to an impressive collection of artists pretending that a hand-drawn, predominantly black-and-white cartoon character (Betty was shockingly revealed to be a red head in 1934) whose fans are mostly shimmying in the great beyond, continues to have cultural relevance in 2025. Charmingly self-deluded, the show itself doubles down on this idea, depicting a present-day New York that enthusiastically welcomes Betty Boop (Jasmine Amy Rogers) after she takes a time-warping, dimensional jump from her make-believe world to a totally authentic one: the Javits Center during Comic Con. Surrounded there by a surfeit of intellectual property, er, cosplayers, Betty Boop passively asserts her own mass popularity in lockstep with a meta musical that’s desperately hoping to inspire it. Never stop being you, Broadway producers!

With a much less renowned supporting cast than Popeye or Superman, two of Max Fleischer’s other studio successes, book writer Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone, The Prom, Elf) utilizes the Betty Boop ensemble sparingly. There’s Betty’s steadfast pooch Pudgy (puppeteered by Phillip Huber) and Grampy (Stephen DeRosa), who you might remember from Betty Boop’s adventures as a bald, long-bearded, Rube Goldberg-esque inventor, if you’re a liar. While Pudgy solely exists to be cute, Grampy has a vital role in Martin’s plot as the creator of the nonsensical technology that sends Betty into the future, makes her curvy figure real, and instigates the possible destruction of the color-deprived realm she cannot leave permanently, because, if she does, some cruel godlike force will take vengeance on every fictitious soul imprisoned there. Martin does not explicitly spell out all of the divine machinations, but that appears to be the gist of it.

While Boop! The Musical aims for anodyne, post-Hays Code family friendliness, it also is animated by a lot of existential dread, starting with Betty herself who is less Olive Oyl than Greta Garbo. Fed up with noncorporeal fame, especially since it primarily comes from being lecherously chased until she conks various would-be assailants cold, Betty aches to swap stardom for personal fulfillment. As luck would have it, Betty quickly meets an orphan, Trisha (Angelica Hale), decked out in Betty Boop gear at Comic Con, who is thrilled to become Betty’s sidekick and help with this noble quest. More fortuitously, Trisha’s guardian Carol (Anastacia McCleskey) doesn’t see an issue letting an adult stranger dressed as Betty Boop hang out with a child, not even unsupervised in an upstairs bedroom. And, as the last bit of fluky good fate, Trisha and Carol have some nebulous personal connection to Betty’s new beau Dwayne (Ainsley Melham), the first guy she encounters at Comic Con not wearing a costume.

To a substantial degree, meeting the handsome Dwayne scratches Betty’s itch for deeper meaning in her pen-and-ink life, a problematic outcome given the musical’s feminist pretensions. Though, to be fair, Betty also assists the consistently shortsighted Carol, who somehow has gained a reputation as a savvy political campaign manager, undo her decision to support the libidinous Raymond Demarest (Erich Bergen) for mayor. Betty rousingly accomplishes the turnaround with a polemic against the unequal distribution of wealth, directed at a particular tech billionaire (the one who pretended to care about reading), that’s soon followed by a bit of concussion-causing violence, which is much more in keeping with Betty’s métier.

But not everything goes Betty’s way. Besides unknowingly setting off a potential cartoon armageddon that only a time-travelling Grampy can stop, Betty must additionally listen as Dwayne–a hip, unemployed Brooklyn trumpeter–introduces himself to her through the hopefully forgettable song “I Speak Jazz.” Although Dwayne is never physically inappropriate with Betty, one still wishes she had an anvil to drop on his blathering head. Admittedly, however, Dwayne improves immeasurably as a character in the second act–despite not shutting up about jazz–as does the fitfully enjoyable score from composer David Foster and lyricist Susan Birkenhead who, most appealingly, write Betty and Dwayne the sweet romantic number “Why Look Around the Corner” for a fetching pas de deux.

Pulling the same double duty he did for the megahit musical Kinky Boots, director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell once again is remarkably inventive when arranging bodies of all types in lovely motion. That includes an enchanting little dance between Grampy and his twenty-first-century lady friend Valentina (Faith Prince in a throwaway role she doesn’t throw away), a dastardly solo routine for the lanky Bergen, and ample high-kicking from a chorus that bounds between elegant monochrome and an array of eye-popping color, proteanly delivered through David Rockwell’s sets, Finn Ross’ projections, and Gregg Barnes’ costumes.

But, top-notch as all of that is, the musical’s unmitigated highlight is the Broadway newcomer Rogers as Betty Boop. While the character’s trademark look and mannerisms certainly contour Rogers’s performance, they do not obscure a wealth of touching flesh-and-blood emotions that all come out in an underwhelming eleven o’clock number, “Something to Shout About,” that, because of Rogers, manages to overwhelm. It seems that Boop! The Musical has a new star rather than an old one.  

Boop! The Musical (open run)

Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.boopthemusical.com

Running time: two hours and 30 minutes including one intermission