'Smash' Lives! On the Scene at the 'Hit List' Concert
For a show that was so battered and bruised throughout its two-season run that it just barely limped across the finish line, Smash has enjoyed a remarkably strong afterlife. If anything, NBC’s ill-fated behind-the-scenes of Broadway series has only grown more popular since it left the airwaves in 2013… at least in its home turf of New York, anyway. In December 2013, seven months after the series finale aired, a chunk of the cast reunited for a live performance of Hit List, the edgy musical that was introduced on the show’s second season. And on June 8, the Actors Fund will host a special concert version of Bombshell, the Marilyn Monroe musical-within-the-musical that wound up winning (unjustly, in our opinion) the Tony Award over Hit List in the show’s version of reality.
On March 3, legions of the Smash faithful piled into the Midtown Manhattan nightclub 54 Below for a mini-cast reunion orchestrated by second-season showrunner Josh Safran, who took over from series creator Theresa Rebeck after she parted ways with the network. Safran — who was celebrating his birthday and essentially admitted to staging the performance as a present to himself — emceed the concert, while Season 2 co-stars Jeremy “Jimmy” Jordan, Andy “Kyle” Mientus. and Krysta “Ana” Rodriguez handled the singing duties, crooning original songs and covers that were performed on the series, as well as a few tunes that didn’t make it on air.
Because Hit List — and these characters — were Safran’s creations, he primarily chose songs the trio sang, or were meant to sing, on the series. One of Mientus’s first numbers was “Pop Goes the Universe,” a pop ballad that was cut from Smash because the producers wanted a tune that could accompany a dance routine. Jordan, meanwhile, belted a deleted song that provided some backstory into Jimmy’s troubled origins. The duo also dueted on a song that did make the final cut: the Julia Houston (Debra Messing) and Tom Levitt (Christian Borle) ditty “They Just Keep Moving the Line,” which Megan Hilty belted out on the second episode of Season 2.
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The rest of the concert was given over to covers, including Rodriguez singing the Lady Gaga side of “Telephone” (while Mientus ably handled Beyoncé), and the trio teaming up for U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” a song that Smash was supposed to perform in the Season 2 premiere, but the band wouldn’t approve the clearance rights. (According to Safran, the explanation was that U2 wasn’t doing Broadway at the time… maybe because their actual Broadway show wasn’t doing so well.) Rodriguez also performed a medley of the many, many songs that were considered for her big moment in Episode 8, when she gave an impromptu audition for bad boy director, Derek Wills, on top of a bar counter. Just as Safran and NBC went back and forth over which song to use, she segued from “Tell Me Something Good” to “Sweet Child O’Mine” to “Cruisin’” to “Crimson and Clover” before winding back to the eventual winner: “If I Were a Boy.”
The night — like Smash itself — signaled its conclusion with an encore cover of “Under Pressure,” as the actors prepared to return to their various other non-Hit List related projects. (Jordan is guest starring in CBS’s Supergirl pilot, Mientus just wrapped up his Broadway run in Les Miserables, and Rodriguez is chronicling her battle with breast cancer.) Based on the cheers that accompanied every song and Smash reference, though, there will probably be many more reunions in their future.
