Just in Time
Broadway review by Adam Feldman
First things first: Just in Time is a helluva good time at the theater. It’s not just that, but that’s the baseline. Staged in a dazzling rush by Alex Timbers, the show summons the spirit of a 1960s concert at the Copacabana by the pop crooner Bobby Darin—as reincarnated by one of Broadway’s most winsome leading men, the radiant sweetie Jonathan Groff, who gives the performance his considerable all. You laugh, you smile, your heart breaks a little, you swing along with the brassy band, and you’re so well diverted and amused that you may not even notice when the ride you’re on takes a few unconventional turns.
Unlike most other jukebox-musical sources, Darin doesn’t come with a long catalogue of signature hits. If you know his work, it’s probably from four songs he released in 1958 and 1959: the novelty soap bubble “Splish Splash,” the doo-wop bop “Dream Lover” and two European cabaret songs translated into English, “Beyond the Sea” and “Mack the Knife.” What he does have is a tragically foreshortened life. “Bobby wanted nothing more than to entertain, wherever he could, however he could, in whatever time he had, which it turns out was very little,” Groff tells us at the top of the show. “He died at 37.” Darin’s bum heart—so weak that doctors thought he wouldn’t survive his teens—is the musical’s countdown clock; it beats like a ticking time bomb.
Just in Time | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy
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