Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Off-Broadway musicals that aim to please by way of nostalgia: 44 THE MUSICAL and ROMY & MICHELE THE MUSICAL

• By drediman
• November 10, 2025
• No Comments

This fall has seen the arrival of a handful of Off-Broadway musicals that aim to please audiences by way of nostalgia — to varying degrees of success. Two recent examples are 44: The Musical and Romy & Michele: The Musical, both of which I’ll discuss more at length below.

44: The Musical
Daryl Roth Theater
Through December 7

First up at the Daryl Roth Theatre near Union Square is 44: The Musical (RECOMMENDED), which arrives in New York after having successfully played Los Angeles and Chicago over the last couple of years. In short, the musical is a lovingly goofy look back at Barack Obama’s presidency — remember those times? — but from the perspective of the hazy memory of Joe Biden (!). As written and directed by Eli Bauman, 44 at its core is a hard-working parody musical — with occasional flashes of real heart and a few relentless earworms in its score — albeit one with a noticeably larger budget at its disposal (e.g., a large cast, a fleshed out band, at least relative to other parody musicals I’ve seen). If you come in with those tempered expectations — as opposed to hoping for the next Hamilton — you’ll likely have an enjoyable time basking in the musical’s fast-paced sketch-like comedy. That being said, the show could arguably be more effective if was trimmed down to a lean and mean intermission-less 90-minutes of political satire. As the Obamas, T.J. Wilson and Shanice are first and foremost top tier singers, which gives their songs — both individually and together — the vocal firepower to soar. For the most part, they rely on the comedically gifted cast around them to generate most of the evening’s hilarity. Perhaps best of the bunch is Chad Doreck, whose zany portrayal of Biden is the loopy engine that runs the show (the actor’s antics call to mind Mitchell Jarvis’s unhinged turn as the narrator Rock of Ages‘ original company).

ROMY & MICHELE: THE MUSICAL
Stage 42
Open run

Less fortunate, however, is the musical version of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED) that’s currently running Off-Broadway at Stage 42. With the truncated title Romy & Michele: The Musical, the spunky but ultimately underwhelming stage adaptation sadly pales in comparison to its cult status source material. Indeed, the most successful bits of the book by Robin Schiff — who adapted his own screenplay — are the ones that have been lifted straight from the film.  Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay’s new songs — which come across in the theater sounding thin and over-synthesized — largely add merely superficial filler to the adventures two endearingly dim-witted women at their 10th anniversary high school reunion, thereby dulling the quirkiness of the movie. As directed by Kristin Hanggi, the resourcefully-staged production struggles to match its “big” musical ambitions (like many musicals these days, there’s an over-reliance on video projections to establish setting, here courtesy of Caite Hevner). The production’s strongest assets are its performances, starting with — in the title roles — Laura Bell Bundy and Kara Lindsay, who bring just enough of their own distinctive personalities to distinguish their performances from Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow’s iconic turns. They have wonderful chemistry and were clearly having a blast at the performance I attended. Also worth cheering for are Je’Shaun Jackson, who winningly plays Toby (the reunion’s irrepressible organizer), as well as Jordan Kai Burnett, whose performance as Heather elevates dour negativity to delectable entertainment.