Theatre in Review: Baby, It's You! (Broadhurst Theatre) I am not one of those musical theatre fans who reflexively hate the jukebox musical. I don't love the format, mind you, but I accept that time marches on and, in certain circumstances, such as Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys , it can be made to work. But if we're going to be living with the jukebox musical for some time to come, in the interests of consumer protection the city or the state or somebody ought to pass a Minimally Competent Libretto Law. That way, we might be spared shows like Baby, It's You! The authors, Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott, had something of a nervous hit last season with Million Dollar Quartet, but that show's premise of four musicians sitting around jamming is hardly a taxing one. It's barely a play and it doesn't pretend otherwise. Baby, It's You!, on the other hand, purports to tell the story of Florence Greenberg, who presided over the rise and fall of the seminal girl group The Shirelles. It's much more challenging material --- key elements include a difficult leading character, a failed romance, changing attitudes about race and sex --- and the authors are simply not up to it. They all but admit their inadequacy in the first scene, set in the Greenberg kitchen in Passaic, New Jersey. It's the late '50s and Florence, the original desperate housewife, kvetches endlessly to Bernie, her schlumpy husband, that she needs a career. He responds that, being a homemaker, she doesn't understand the meaning of a job. (This remark drew hisses from the largely female audience at the matinee I attended.) The argument continues, with the authors beginning their long reliance on the word "oy" for an easy laugh. Anyway, Florence's daughter, Mary Jane, introduces her mother to a group of four black girls, whom Florence dubs The Shirelles. (Bernie is predictably upset that the girls are black; in his worst-case scenario, he worried that they might be shiksas.) Despite some early struggles and a minor contractual skirmish with Decca Records, the act takes off and it's not long before the Shirelles are being referred to as "the number-one girl group of all time." One big reason for the Shirelles' success is Luther Dixon, whom Florence hires to produce their songs. (Bernie on Luther: "The whole city is full of Yiddim and you have to hire a shvartze?" Oy, Bernie, oy.) Anyway, it's not long before Florence and Luther are stealing kisses in the recording studio. And that's it for plot. With its driven leading character, interracial romance, and birth-of-a-musical-era background, Baby, It's You! apparently aims to be the poor woman's Memphis, but it can't come near even that so-so effort. For one thing, there's almost no storyline. Florence builds her business and it becomes a success. Florence and Luther are lovers until they break up, The Shirelles are a hit for several years, then they fade away. Florence cuts them loose and replaces them with Dionne Warwick. (All of this information is delivered in such bits and pieces that they're more like a series of telegrams delivered between the musical numbers.) And, in what may be the least earned ending of the season, a few years later, Florence wanders into a theatre where the Shirelles are playing; they see her, and stop their performance for one of those on-stage hug reunions that have been so popular ever since Dreamgirls -- a show that has all the drama, vivid characters, and theatrical excitement that Baby, It's You! so sorely lacks. The authors work overtime trying to suggest that Florence is a pioneer feminist, challenging the expectations and prejudices of her time. But you can make an equally good case that she is monumentally selfish, dropping her husband and career to run around the country with The Shirelles and her lover, then dropping them when it's time for her to move on to other, more lucrative pursuits. Her relationships with her children are so poorly dramatized as to be meaningless. There's a to-do in Act I about her guilt over her blind son, who produces a cover version of "Dedicated to the One I Love" that tanks -- but he quickly; drops out of the story altogether. The subplot focusing on her daughter is so confusing that at one point I thought she grew up to become Lesley Gore -- but, no, it's just the double-casting of Kelli Barrett in both roles. The four actresses playing The Shirelles don't really get characters, although Christina Sajous, as Shirley, the lead singer, gets to exercise her vamp tendencies once in a while. The staging of their numbers is so listless that the uninitiated might wonder what the fuss over The Shirelles is about. A couple of attempts are made at forcing numbers like "Mama Said" to do the job of book numbers, with painful results. In shows like The Drowsy Chaperone and Elf, Beth Leavel has been a warm, ingratiating presence and a sly comedienne; here, under the direction of Mutrux and Sheldon Epps, she offers one over-the-top line reading after another, and quickly becomes grating. At the end of Act I, when Florence is caught by Bernie getting on board a train with Luther, Leavel throws her arms out and, looking upward, strikes an oversized note of despair. She looks like she's asking God if this really was the best role she could have gotten this season. Nobody else performs with much distinction -- how could they, with this material? - although Allan Louis is appealing as Luther, and Erica Ash makes a nice impression as Dionne Warwick. Surprisingly, the show's production design is as inventive and classy as the material is tacky and derivative. Anna Louizos' setting, with its multilevel, articulating bandstand is a total pleasure; she also builds in five projection screens that Jason Thompson fills with plenty of evocative period imagery. Howell Binkley caresses every surface of the set with deeply saturated colors, creating a warm and glamorous atmosphere. On the other hand, Lizz Wolf's costumes are a little garish at times, and Carl Casella's sound design doesn't really allow the voices to break through Don Sebesky's expansive orchestrations. But the fundamental problem of Baby, It's You! is that nobody involved has any how to dramatize the story of Greenberg's life --- or why they are doing it. Jukebox shows are meant to celebrate the music of certain artists or composers. This one is so lamely, lazily written that it sabotages its subject matter instead.--David Barbour 
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