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    ‘Just in Time’ Review: Jonathan Groff Channels Bobby Darin

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    Groff is sensational as the ’60s “nightclub animal” in a Broadway bio-musical jukebox that doesn’t live up to its star.When Jonathan Groff says “I’m a wet man,” he means it.The admission comes near the start of “Just in Time,” the Bobby Darin bio-musical that opened on Saturday at Circle in the Square. It’s a warning to the 22 audience members seated at cabaret tables in the middle of the action that they may want to don raincoats as he sings and dances, sweating and spitting, a-splishin’ and a-splashin’.But Groff is wet in another sense too: He’s a rushing pipeline, a body and voice that seem to have evolved with the specific goal of transporting feelings from the inside to the outside. A rarity among male musical theater stars, he is thrilling not just sonically but also emotionally, all in one breath.And Darin, the self-described “nightclub animal” who bounced from bopper to crooner to quester to recluse, is a great fit for him. Not because they are alike in temperament, other than a compulsion to entertain and be embraced by an audience. Nor do they sound alike: Groff’s voice is lovelier than Darin’s, rounder and healthier. But the Broadway and Brill Building songs Darin sang, some of which he wrote, offer the scale, the snap and the bravura opportunities that are more often, now as then, a diva’s birthright, not a divo’s.In other words, Groff is sensational.“Just in Time,” directed by Alex Timbers, with a book by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, at first seems like it will be too. Certainly the opening is a wonderful jolt. Making the smart choice to introduce Groff as himself, not as Darin, the show immediately breaks out of the jukebox box, liberating its songs from service as literal illustrations. My dread that oldies involving the word “heart” would be shoehorned into the story line about Darin’s rheumatic fever was temporarily tamped.Michele Pawk, left, as the maternal Polly and Emily Bergl as the sisterly Nina, indulging and fretting over the young Darin, a sickly boy not expected to live past 16.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesInstead, “Just in Time” begins as a straight-ahead floor show in the Las Vegas style, with Groff, in a perfectly cut suit by Catherine Zuber, buzzing between song and patter while seducing the audience. The set designer Derek McLane has converted Circle’s awkward oval into a sumptuous supper club, with silver Austrian draperies covering the walls and clinking glasses of booze at the cabaret tables. A bandstand at one end of the playing space, and banquettes surrounding a mini-stage at the other, suggest a blank showbiz canvas, with flashy gold-and-indigo lighting by Justin Townsend to color it in. Darin, it seems, will be merely a pretext.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      6 Songs From ‘Just in Time’ That Capture Bobby Darin’s Legacy

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      Before David Bowie, Madonna and Beyoncé made the idea of being a pop star synonymous with constant reinvention, there was Bobby Darin.He “could sound like anybody and sing any style,” Bob Dylan wrote of the singer in his 2022 book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” Not only was Darin “more flexible than anyone of his time,” Dylan noted, but “even in repose he just about vibrated with talent.”Neil Young, another rocker known for musical shape-shifting, expressed similar admiration. “I used to be pissed off at Bobby Darin because he changed styles so much,” he told Rolling Stone. “Now I look at him and think he was a [expletive] genius.”It’s that versatility, alongside his complicated life, that the new Broadway show “Just in Time,” in previews at Circle in the Square Theater, aims to explore through Darin’s swinging hits.Developed and directed by Alex Timbers (a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge!”) and starring Jonathan Groff (a Tony winner last year for “Merrily We Roll Along”), “Just in Time” is set in a nightclub, complete with an onstage band. While Darin is remembered for his magnetic performances, his story requires something more than a conventional jukebox bio-musical.Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darin, singing his first big hit song, “Splish Splash,” in the musical “Just in Time” at the Circle in the Square Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Jonathan Groff, Fresh Off Tony Win, Will Return to Broadway as Bobby Darin

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      “Just in Time,” a new musical about the “Mack the Knife” pop singer, will open next spring at Circle in the Square in Manhattan.Jonathan Groff, who won his first Tony Award in June for starring in a hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” will return to Broadway next spring to play Bobby Darin in a biomusical he has been developing for years.The musical, “Just in Time,” is to begin previews March 28 and to open April 23 at Circle in the Square Theater in Midtown Manhattan. The theater, with its close approximation of an in-the-round experience, will be configured to accommodate an immersive nightclub-like staging, with a 16-person cast, an onstage big band, two stages and some cabaret-style seating.The show began its life in 2018 at the 92nd Street Y as a five-performance concert called “The Bobby Darin Story,” and has been developed through a number of workshops. In an interview, Groff said he hadn’t been sure what to expect from that initial run, but that “it lit me up.”“There is some sort of kinetic magic that happens with the live execution of his material,” said Groff, 39, who was also a Tony nominee for “Hamilton” (he played King George III) and “Spring Awakening” (his breakout role). He has worked extensively on television (“Glee,” “Looking” and “Mindhunter”) and reached global audiences with his voice work as Kristoff in Disney’s “Frozen” films.Darin, a singer-songwriter whose pop career peaked in the 1950s and ’60s, is best known for the songs “Splish Splash,” “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea.” He suffered from a heart condition, and died at the age of 37.“Dramatically he’s really interesting, because what do you do when your whole career is on borrowed time?” said the musical’s director, Alex Timbers, who won a Tony Award for directing “Moulin Rouge!” “His life was lived at high-octane speed. A woman he thought was his sister ended up being his mother. He went on a whole voyage into folk and pop and then decided he was a nightclub animal.”The musical has a book by Warren Leight (a Tony winner for “Side Man”) and Isaac Oliver and will be choreographed by Shannon Lewis. The show was conceived by Ted Chapin, who wrote the initial script and produced it at the Y as part of that institution’s long-running Lyrics & Lyricists series.“We all got invested and excited about the idea of telling his life story in this environment of a night club,” Groff said. “We’re playing with the genre of the biomusical, trying to find our own unique point of view and way into not only his story but also the genre itself. There’s a bit of experimentation happening here.”The lead producers of “Just in Time” are Tom Kirdahy, Robert Ahrens and John Frost; the musical is being capitalized for up to $12.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More