‘Big’ Has Growing Pains on Broadway : Musical Based on 1988 Film Struggles to Find Youth’s Magic

The big news today is disappointing. A new American musical opened at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre Sunday night, and it tries so hard to entertain that it might just break your heart. That’s not to say, however, the show will move you.

Based on the 1988 Penny Marshall film of the same name, “Big” strains relentlessly to replicate the movie’s charm. Choreographed and directed within an inch of its life, “Big” appears positively frantic in its first 40 minutes and thereafter continues to work laboriously to seem natural. At best, the show manages to cross from being dutifully perky to momentarily high-spirited. “Big” doesn’t come anywhere near a truly big emotion.

As in the film, a 12-year-old boy named Josh (Patrick Levis) makes a wish on a carnival arcade machine called Zoltar and wakes up the next morning splitting his pajamas, a grown man. “Big” explores the issue of growing up too soon, as well as of recapturing the innocence and fun of childhood. These are good themes, well used in Broadway musicals from “Peter Pan” to “Bye, Bye Birdie.” But a key ingredient is missing here. Director Mike Ockrent and choreographer Susan Stroman have got everyone onstage working strenuously to execute their thesis, but no one seems to be actually having fun.

David Shire’s music, sometimes pleasant and always unsurprising, is at its worst when it condescends to sound hip and only manages a kind of tribute to Burt Bacharach-styled pop. Orchestrated by Douglas Besterman, these “young” songs feature the kind of “wild” electric guitar that Broadway musicals have ineffectively used to signal young people’s music since the early ‘60s. In the same vein, the talented Stroman (“Crazy for You,” “Showboat”) has the show’s many child actors move in energetic but smoothed-over rap steps, sanitized for your enjoyment. The kids, good dancers though they may be, appear a little desperate, aggressively smiling with an unappealing, fake nonchalance.

In more familiar territory, Shire’s ballads are easier to take, and are easy on the ears. But they never break out of their paint-by-numbers emotional situations. The songs have clear-cut beginnings, middles and ends, and you can hear all the words. Lyricist Richard Maltby seems always content with the obvious.

Inspired by Josh’s boyishness, a toy-company executive named Susan (Crista Moore) tries to recall what it was like to be 13 in one song, called “Dancing All the Time.” “I was laughing all the time / I was dancing all the time / I had all the time in the world,” she sings, in a remembrance of childhood that is as unconvincing as it is generic.

A certain antiseptic feel extends to the famous FAO Schwarz scene, in which Josh and his toy company boss MacMillan (Jon Cypher) dance “Chopsticks” on a giant keyboard. The scene, in which the two are soon joined by happy children and once-uptight adults letting loose, is a complexly choreographed number that has no more authentic joy than a TV commercial for the toy store, which by the way is one of the show’s producers.

The suburban and city settings for the show, designed by Robin Wagner, look sterile as well. Young Josh’s suburban home is not homey and beckoning, as it was in the film, but prefab and manicured. Josh’s Manhattan apartment was, in the film, an airy downtown loft awash in games. Here, it just looks like another spoiled suburban kid’s toy-filled room.

Where, oh where, is the magic? As grown-up Josh, Daniel Jenkins has big shoes to fill. In the film, Tom Hanks effortlessly showed us the kid in the man, without the man ever seeming like an idiot. Jenkins is a hard-working actor, and, physically, his performance is inventive. His lanky body seems to follow him around like an afterthought. But he is undeniably short on the kind of charisma that could add zest to the obligatory feelings rolled out here, both in the songs and in John Weidman’s intermittently funny book.

As Josh’s girlfriend, Moore does not metamorphose from hard career girl to a lovely woman, as in the film, but stays pretty much the same throughout, though she is perfectly sweet. As Josh’s mom, Barbara Walsh provides much-needed reflection in the second-act song “Stop, Time,” a mother’s view of the fleeting nature of childhood. As the toy store boss, Jon Cypher is a Willy Wonka manque, without the true wonder. When he commands his employees to bring their children to a company party and then brutally chews them out in front of the kids, he comes off as unnecessarily nasty. But the director and choreographer need those kids at that party to perform the Act 1 closer, “Cross the Line,” so never mind how it makes a main character look.

Of the kids, Brett Tabisel as Billy, the best friend who gets dumped by the adult Josh, is an authentic chunk of boy, believably impish and kind. His anger (sung sarcastically in rap) at the top of Act 2 is one of “Big’s” few achievements.

These days, a lot of expectations attend the opening of an all-new Broadway musical. This spring happens to also boast relatively new musicals by authentically young voices--Jonathan Larsen’s “Rent,” which opens tonight for one. We also have Savion Glover’s electrifying choreography for “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk,” which opened on Broadway late last week. Next to these shows, “Big” might just look like the visiting uncle whose presence you politely endure while you’d really rather be having fun somewhere else.

* “Big,” Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St., New York. For ticket information: (800) 432-7250.