'Smash': Broadway Goes 'Bombshell' for 1 Night Only
Monday was a smashing night on Broadway, when the cast of NBC’s gone-but-definitely-not-forgotten drama, Smash, reunited for a concert version of its musical-within-the-musical, Bombshell. A highlights reel from that event has now hit the web and, we hope, either heralds a future DVD release of the full concert or a nationwide tour… whichever comes first.
Staged at the Minskoff Theatre as a benefit for The Actors Fund, the event began with Debra Messing and recent Tony winner Christian Borle — who played the creative team behind the Marilyn Monroe-centric musical, Julia Houston and Derek Wills — jokingly introducing “the score we wrote” for Bombhsell. (The actual writers, of course, were Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.) Smash’s two leading ladies, Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee, then took the stage for the first number, a rendition of the show’s central anthem, “Let Me Be Your Star.” Going forward, the two traded off singing-and-dancing duties throughout the night, with McPhee, for example, performing “The 20th Century Fox Mambo” while Hilty tackled “They Just Keep Moving the Line.”
Plenty of other familiar Smash faces joined in the fun as well. Ann Harada, who played the long-suffering stage manager, Linda, cut loose with “I Never Met a Wolf Who Didn’t Love to Howl,” and Jeremy Jordan — who in the Smash-verse created and starred in Bombshell’s competing show, Hit List — ably handled “Cut, Print… Moving On.” The only thing that could have made the night complete? If sabotage-happy assistant Ellis had shown up to belt out “Let’s Be Bad.”
