Theater Reviews: Three Summer Shows (“Joy,” “Rolling Thunder,” “Ginger Twinses”) Rely Too Heavily on Nostalgia as Their Selling Points

Joy (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Joy 
At the Laura Pels Theater 

Joy, the musicalized version of a Joy Mangano’s true life journey from struggling Long Island single mother to a QVC multimillionaire, rarely achieves the elated emotion synonymous with her name. It was also the tonal problem with David O’Russell’s 2015 movie version with the same title. Joy’s trial and tribulations before the admittingly happy ending of entrepreneurial success makes for a curious tale, but joy? No. However, like the movie version, there is a secret ingredient that makes the story engaging, and that is the actress playing Joy. Jennifer Lawrence received a surprise lone Oscar nomination for the film, providing a sympathetic portrayal of Mangano, which is the same quality the always engaging Betsy Wolfe (Mrs. Shakespeare in & Juliet) provides here. Ken Davenport and AnnMarie Milazzo, the show’s writers, do provide a musical comedy sheen over the story as Joy, always the problem solver, can’t figure out how to make her 1990’s life tenable when she loses her airline job and still has to run a household that includes her teenage daughter Christie (Honor Blue Savage), her ex-husband Tony (Brandon Espinoza), who lives in the basement, and her divorced parents (Adam Grupper and Jill Abramovitz). Only when she comes up with the idea of the Miracle Mop does any hope enter her life—but a woman with barely a savings account predictably runs into a lot of roadblocks, from the Connecticut men who run QVC to the company that manufactures the mops (Texan men, naturally) with barely any emotional support from her needy family, who has experienced too many of Joy’s crazy ideas. 

Reviews: No, Heather, It’s “Heathers The Musical’s” Turn (Again) Off-Broadway, and It’s a Hoot; While the Film “Unicorns” Tells a Sympathetic Love Story Between a Sexually Conflicted British Guy and a Gaysian Drag Queen

Heathers The Musical (c) Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Theater: Heathers The Musical 
At New World Stages 

The deafening cheers at the newly revived Heathers The Musical tell me an important characteristic about young audience members: They love their nostalgia, regardless of how pessimistic the original source material is. Heathers The Musical, which premiered at New World Stages in 2014 for a five-month stint, was adapted by Laurence O'Keefe and Kevin Murphy from the 1989 film that starred Winona Ryder as ordinary high school senior Veronica Sawyer, whose life changes when she is accepted into the most popular clique in school, the Heathers. This new production of the musical (back at New World Stages) originated in the UK, directed by Andy Fickman, hews close to the film’s plot, which has Veronica, now played with humor and ferocity by Lorna Courtney (who originated the titled character in & Juliet), also flirting with the outsider new kid, JD (Casey Likes, of Back to the Future), whose dark energy soon brings chaos to Westerberg High School, including, like, murder. Unlike the musical adaptation of Mean Girls, which also includes a plot of an outsider being adopted by the popular girls and would arrive on Broadway a few years later, Heathers The Musical goes down darker roads O'Keefe and Murphy don’t shy away from, making it closer in feels to the recent musicalize version of the film, Teeth.