Schmigadoon! finally feels like a musical

In Schmigadoon!, doctors Melissa and Josh have been dating for a few years and have reached a rut. While on a couples retreat in the Catskills, they cross a bridge into the magical world of Schmigadoon, a quaint, turn-of-the-20th-century town where everyone behaves as if they’re in a musical. Melissa loves musicals and is immediately charmed; Josh feels the opposite. Regardless, in order to leave, they must find true love, whether with each other or a denizen of Schmigadoon. 

So goes the plot of Schmigadoon!, both in season one of the Apple TV series, which was created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, and the Broadway musical that just opened. The effect of the story could not be more different between the two mediums. On screen, Schmigadoon! was an overlit slog, SNL-sketch conceit stretched into six self-congratulatory, heavily referential episodes, in both its first season and its second, the 1970s-parodying Schmicago. On stage, it’s a total blast. A chorus line dances their asses off in front of vibrant, painted sets. There is sweat and texture to the other reality when you see it feet away from you. It feels like the difference between the Oz of Wicked and that of The Wizard Of Oz. It feels alive.

That’s because it is. Forget Melissa and Josh—the real marriage this production of Schmigadoon!, which was adapted by Paul, achieves is the one between content and form. On both screen and stage, Schmigadoon! wears its references on its gartered sleeves, and every one of those references are stage musicals. Sure, The Sound Of Music is also an extremely well-known film, but it’s a stage musical at its core. There are plenty of movie musicals that were born as movie musicals—Meet Me In St. Louis and The Wizard Of Oz come to mind—that might have lent themselves better to an extended onscreen parody. But for better or worse, the musicals that Schmigadoon! loves are ones that were created to be performed live on stage. It shouldn’t be a surprise that watching it on one makes for a much better experience. 

A key to this success is the staged Schmigadoon!‘s mastery of the fourth wall break. Josh (Alex Brightman) constantly points out that they’re in a musical and that the people are acting abnormally—but not to the audience. These observations are part of conversations with Melissa (Sara Chase) or perhaps with the other people of Schmigadoon, who either don’t know or don’t care about what he means. No one else ever breaks character, and even when Melissa and Josh point out how weird everyone is acting, it’s only to each other, not to the audience. It does actually feel like two normies wandered into a real musical by accident. 

And because it’s a real musical, it can be appreciated as one, not just as a string of references to other ones. Neither version of the story is especially trusting of its audience to understand what they’re parodying; there are multiple times where Melissa tells Josh what they’re seeing is like The Music Man or The Sound Of Music, which can grate. But on Broadway, those references come via huge production numbers. Take the Act I finale, “Cross That Bridge,” a loose “Brotherhood Of Man” parody that appears in the series’ third episode. In the TV series, we get multiple extended shots of Josh (played by Keegan-Michael Key) crossing a bridge intercut with an ensemble, constrained by the frame, doing some comparatively mild choreography. It’s hard to build any real sense of momentum in a dance number when you’re constantly cutting to something else. On stage, we don’t have to worry about this because they’re both happening simultaneously in front of us. Josh can keep trying and failing to cross the bridge out of Schmigadoon while the ensemble really gets a chance to cook with Christopher Gattelli’s choreography.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this transfer is how little of the text has been changed between the two versions; even specific dance moves (as deployed in “With All Of Your Heart”) and orchestrations have been transposed directly from the Apple TV series. (Melissa does get a new 11 o’clock number, a worthwhile addition.) Changing the medium casts Paul’s existing work in a much more positive, loving light.  Schmigadoon! is not just referential but reverential to the shows it wants to parody. This production is made with real craft and care. After two seasons and an out-of-town tryout, Schmigadoon! crossed the bridge from a place with scrolling credits and autoplay to one with an intermission and applause breaks, landing in the place it was supposed to be all along.