Sara Bareilles, They Might Be Giants, John Legend, and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry are just a few of the stars to provide songs. The highlight of the Coterie’s production, like the original before it, is the music, which comes from an impossibly eclectic range of talented musicians. While the play itself captures the unceasing silliness of the original cartoon, the straightforward aesthetic makes the show feel accessible for even the most begrudging adult companions. The sense of simplicity is deliberately cultivated, from the jellyfish made of paper lanterns and crepe paper hanging as house lights through the theater, to the foley artist (Ava Woleskey) performing sound effects live onstage. The glum Squidward’s status as a humanoid cephalopod is displayed through a second set of legs sewn into his trousers–an effective gag that fully pays off with an extended tap dancing routine in one of the show’s best numbers, “I’m Not a Loser.” Krabs’ claws are represented by dual red baseball gloves. Tyler Fromson plays SpongeBob in a shirt and short red tie, exuding big “Book of Mormon” peppiness. There are no prosthetics, elaborate face makeup, or giant sponge costumes. In “The SpongeBob Musical,” the characters populating the undersea town of Bikini Bottom are presented with clean simplicity. But even parents with little to no knowledge of the original Nickelodeon show are likely to have a pretty great time. Kids are basically guaranteed to be delighted, as are those nostalgic millennials. This still feels like the musical for nearly everyone. Whole subplots and entire characters have been cut but what remains is far from bare-bones. (The recommended age for the show is five and up.) Retitled “The SpongeBob Musical for Young Audiences,” the new version maintains the impressive heart of the original while streamlining it to make it more accessible for some of SpongeBob’s youngest fans. Yet as stellar as SpongeBob’s reviews were, the two-hour, twenty-minute runtime (not to mention the price of a Broadway theatre ticket) was sure to be prohibitive for plenty of young children.Įnter the Coterie Theatre’s brand-new 70-minute adaptation. The production called itself (via the sign hanging outside its own theater) “The Broadway Musical for Everyone”–meaning it was designed to entertain regular Broadway audiences, kids, nostalgic millennials, and everyone in between. The play, based on the iconic Nickelodeon animated series, was called “exhaustingly imaginative” by the New York Times and “inspired nonsense” by the New Yorker. When “SpongeBob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical” debuted on Broadway in 2017, reviews for the show were shockingly impressive. The cast of “The SpongeBob Musical,” led by Tyler Fromson (Photo by Jordan Rice courtesy of The Coterie Theatre)
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