There was a certain giddy novelty to “Schmigadoon!” when it premiered on Apple TV+: an, affectionate parody of Golden Age Broadway musicals delivered in brisk, bingeable episodes, with the added pleasure of spotting its references to classics like “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “The Sound of Music,” and “The Music Man.” It felt like a clever inside joke that somehow slipped onto a mainstream streaming platform.
On Broadway, that joke proves harder to sustain.
Now adapted for the stage at the Nederlander Theatre, “Schmigadoon!” arrives with key members of its creative team intact, including writer-composer Cinco Paul and director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli. It is a very faithful translation of the television series. Maybe too faithful. What played as a nimble, episodic satire on screen feels stretched thin as a full-length Broadway musical.
The premise is simple enough. Josh (Alex Brightman) and Melissa (Sara Chase), a contemporary couple whose relationship has quietly stalled, stumble into a hyper-idealized town that operates entirely according to the rules of a Broadway musical from the 1940s and 1950s. They soon discover they cannot leave until they find “true love.”
The reliance on parody is both the show’s strength and its limitation. Numbers like “Corn Puddin’,” which turns a banal comfort food into a full-throated ensemble anthem with call-and-response verses, and the picnic basket auction lifted straight from “Oklahoma!” show how closely the material tracks its sources. A brooding solo like “You Can’t Tame Me” channels “Carousel” with affectionate accuracy. But the humor starts to wear thin fairly quickly.
The problem isn’t that the material originated on television. It’s that the stage version doesn’t do much to rethink it. Unlike more ambitious screen-to-stage transfers such as last season’s “Smash,” which at least tried to reshape its source material, “Schmigadoon!” mostly just relocates it. The result plays less like a new musical than a carefully mounted rerun.
To the production’s credit, it looks great. Candy-colored backdrops evoke the painted charm of the period, and the choreography is bright, energetic, and right on stylistically. Visually, it delivers.
Brad Oscar brings sturdy comic authority to Mayor Menlove, and Ana Gasteyer leans into the severity of the moralizing Mildred Layton. Ann Harada, reprising her role from the series, fits comfortably into the show’s stylized world.
At the center, though, the performances are less compelling. Brightman, so electric in “Beetlejuice” and “School of Rock,” mostly reacts, registering disbelief and irritation as songs happen around him rather than driving the action. Chase brings more dimension to Melissa, but there’s only so much she can do with a character who never quite deepens. Among the supporting players, McKenzie Kurtz pushes the flirtatious Betsy so far into caricature that the performance starts to grate.
There is an irony here. On television, “Schmigadoon!” felt like a gateway, a playful introduction to Broadway traditions for a wide audience. On Broadway, that sense of discovery disappears. The references no longer surprise; they just sit there, piling up with diminishing returns.
Nederlander Theatre, 208 W. 41st St., schmigadoonbroadway.com. Through Sept. 6.
