‘Smash’ often stretches truth, but some bits legit

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A real Broadway musical must win over an army of funders, but on “Smash” just one deep-pocketed producer (Anjelica Huston, with Jack Davenport) foots the whole bill.

Updated: March 1, 2012 8:04AM

Does the making of a Broadway musical, as imagined in “Smash,” bear any resemblance to its creation in real life? Let’s just say that amid the show’s massive pile of cliches there are some figments of truth. Here’s a self-administered test examining the basics:

Q. Would a musical about Marilyn Monroe have appeal for Broadway producers and audiences?

A. You bet it would. And I suppose whatever rights that might be needed to put her life story up onstage have already been cleared. After all, look at the powerhouse producing team behind this television series. It includes, among others, Steven Spielberg, as well as Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the pair widely credited with reviving movie musicals, including the film versions of “Chicago” and “Hairspray.” (Zadan actually credits Bette Midler, who starred in the 1993 TV version of “Gypsy,” with getting the renaissance started, although it was the more recent success of “Glee” that sealed the deal.) Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman (who wrote the score for the Broadway hit “Hairspray” and are creating the songs for the “Marilyn” musical) are also among the producing team, along with writers Theresa Rebeck and David Marshall Grant.

Q. The first season of “Smash” will end as the musical of “Marilyn” heads for an out-of-town preview. Is this the usual route?

A. That can happen; think of “The Addams Family,” which had its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago. But it leaves out a whole lot of steps that come before such tryouts — from readings, to backers’ auditions (it takes an army of money people these days, but here it’s just a single producer, in the form of Anjelica Huston), to workshops, to yet more workshops, to regional theater “test runs.” You would have to say that “Smash” highly condenses the process and that, at least on the evidence of the first episode, makes you think the show more or less unspools in its entirety in one great creative burst.

Q. Is it a given that the only man suitable to serve as the “genius director” of “Marilyn” must be a coolly good-looking but wholly arrogant and narcissistic Brit (who appears to be straight, at least on the surface)?

A. British? Very likely, and of course, many years ago, the late Wendy Wasserstein gave us a version of Derek (the character played by Jack Davenport in “Smash”) in her play “The Sisters Rosensweig.” Straight? Sorry ladies, the odds are strongly against this.

Q. Debra Messing and Christian Borle play the songwriting team for “Marilyn,” but there is no one in the role of the musical’s book writer. What’s going on?

A. Two possibilities: Either “Marilyn” will be a sung-through musical (with no spoken dialogue) or, like most musicals, the lack of a strong book will turn out to be its biggest problem, and this weakness will be “discovered” at its out-of-town tryout. Of course, everybody knows the Monroe story, but that doesn’t negate the need for a good book.

Q. Would the producers of a high budget Broadway-bound musical opt for an unknown in the lead, as it appears might happen for the title role of “Marilyn” (with Katharine McPhee playing the role of beguiling newcomer Karen Cartwright)?

A. Although these days Hollywood stars are the preferred casting choices for Broadway shows (even if those stars haven’t performed in a musical beyond high school), there are exceptions to the rule. Consider how Chicago’s own Jessie Mueller got a break this season in “On a Clear Day.” And such an “unknown” might just be lucky enough to have a very New York boyfriend like Dev Sundaram (played with great charm by Raza Jaffrey). This character — very likely a first generation Indian-American (of Mumbai origin), in a high-profile job in city government job — is by far the most refreshingly real and original aspect of the whole series so far. But do Cartwright’s parents really have to be provincials from the Midwest (like the Beinekes of “The Addams Family”)? This is just so tiresome, so predictable.

Q. Who will play Marilyn’s husbands, Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller?

A. I have no idea, but will Arthur Miller be portrayed in Henry Higgins mode?

Q. Is that New York rehearsal studio realistic?

A. It’s totally authentic. A number of years ago I watched rehearsals for Twyla Tharp’s “Movin’ Out” in the same glass-walled highrise near Times Square.

Q. Does the casting couch still exist on Broadway?

A. No doubt it does, but rarely with a male and a female on it.