Backwards time travel always fascinates we mortals, stuck as we are in the present where nothing seems to be going right. In this Presidential Election year, many Democrats want to go back a few years to the days when Obama strolled the halls of the White house while a huge chunk of Republicans want to flash back a couple centuries to when women and minorities “knew their place.”
In balmy 1985, the film Back to the Future dazzled us with a time jaunt back to 1955 when high-schooler Marty McFly and his Delorean met his parents when they were teenagers too and, you know, hilarity ensued.
The stage version of that uber-popular flick—Back to the Future, the Musical—is now making a tour stop at Playhouse Square, and while the staging effects are spectacular enough to buckle your knees (even while sitting) the rest of the play often falls short on a few scores.
Aside from the cute premise, the engine that powered the original BTTF flick was a trio of performances: Michael J. Fox as Marty; Crispin Glover as his twitchy, pathologically passive dad George; and Christopher Lloyd as the genius inventor and professional wackadoodle Doc Brown. Those three actors kept the story compelling, and the laughs followed.
In this stage iteration directed by John Rando, Caden Brauch plays Marty as if he’s a minor character who surprisingly found himself with a lot of lines to read. His stage presence is minimal, and his singing and acting are no more than okay. But what’s missing is the goofy charm that makes his character relatable. When he finds himself in the bedroom of high schooler Lorraine (Zan Berube), the exquisite strangeness of a teen being hit on by his own mom, now young as himself, is not played to maximum effect.
As for dad George, Burke Swanson takes Glover’s quirky physical mannerisms and turns them into a bizarre series of gyrations that are less amusing than they are curious and a bit troubling. Instead of doing his own interpretation of George, Swanson opts for a highly exaggerated and therefore pale imitation.
Don Stephenson pays homage to Lloyd’s manic masterpiece in the juicy role of Doc Brown, but he is an agile enough performer to make many moments and laughs all his own.
These actors and the large ensemble are not helped by the score and lyrics, which seem to have been crafted by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard while wearing oven mitts. The music is uninspired, and the lyrics are often circular and confusing (ie. In the song “Future Boy:” “Future boy/I’m no future boy/’Cause I think I’m here to stay/What’s the future for/If I don’t get more than today?/I’m no future boy”). The one excellent song is “The Power of Love,” written by Huey Lewis and the News for the film soundtrack.
There is also a lame subplot featuring Cartreze Tucker as a Black man who also dreams of the future, but despite Tucker’s best efforts it feels tacked on. Even the show “villain,” in the form of town bully Biff (Ethan Rogers), seems like he’s been borrowed from a thousand other scripts and performances.
Still, the production is damn near saved by the video effects (designer Finn Ross) which are blended with Gareth Owen’s sound and the lighting design by Tim Lutkin and Hugh Vanstone to make the full-size Delorean sports car leap to life. The sequence when Doc Brown is climbing a video staircase (!) to the top of the clocktower while Marty floors the car to make his escape back to present-day time is a sure-fire Broadway boner and receives its own well-deserved ovation.
If the rest of the production displayed that level of theatrical invention, this would be a show to remember. As it is, it only makes us want to go back to the past for another viewing of the original film.
Back to the Future, the Musical
Through July 7 at Playhouse Square, KeyBank State Theater, 1615 Euclid Ave., playhousesquare.org, 216-241-6000.
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Christine Howey
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