Theater review"Escape to Margaritaville"
Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes, one intermission. Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway; 212-382-0100
Cheaper than a week at Club Med and just as mentally stimulating, “Escape to Margaritaville” opened Thursday on Broadway to a sea of Jimmy Buffett fans and a few souls who never guessed cheeseburgers could spark such rapture.
This all-you-can-eat Buffett bounced around the country before docking at the Marquis Theatre, which dressed down for the occasion: Adirondack chairs and Tiki-tacky signs fill the lobby while the frozen concoction of the title churns away at the bars. A sippy cup-full costs $16. Go on and get one: It helps set the mood, which is so laid-back, it’s nearly horizontal. When the Hawaiian-shirted usher hands you a Playbill, you half expect a tube of tanning oil to come with it.
Speaking of Playbills, this is the rare time a show’s songs — all 26 of them, brilliantly arranged by Christopher Jahnke — have been listed alphabetically, from “A Pirate Looks at 40” to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.” So while you know your favorite Buffett song is in there, you never quite know when it will pop up. Hence the ripple of excitement that greeted the tower of cheeseburgers (cue up “Cheeseburger in Paradise”) that rolled onto the stage at a recent matinee, which contained more middle-aged straight men than Broadway’s seen since “Rock of Ages.”
TV writers Greg Garcia (“My Name Is Earl”) and Mike O’Malley (“Shameless”) have strung together this flimsy hammock of a story, set at an island hotel that an uncharitable Yelper calls “the pimple of the sea.” It’s here, where the cocktail hour never ends, that we meet Tully (Paul Alexander Nolan). He’s a guitar-strumming slacker who plays with the band and beds a bevy of guests before being brought to his tanned knees by an environmental scientist from Cincinnati.
That would be Rachel (Alison Luff), who’s come not for fun, but for soil samples — and to keep her BFF, Tammy, from marrying her despicable fiancé.
Love rears its head, not only between Rachel and Tully but Tammy and the hotel’s bartender. Even a grizzled, one-eyed barfly gets some action, after popping a Viagra or two. (There’s a vibrator joke in here as well.)
It’s all peppered with Buffett’s hits, a few of which he’s tweaked to suit the plot and the times, like the reference to Mar-a-Lago that bubbles up in “Volcano.” Some of his new songs fall flat, including one thankless number that’s the first, and hopefully last, to name-check Sheryl Sandberg.
Directed by Christopher Ashley, hot off a Tony for “Come From Away,” “Escape to Margaritaville” meanders along pleasantly enough. Its appeal may last only as long as there are Parrotheads around to see it, but it helps that the show’s so well cast and sung. Nolan, who made a fine son of God in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” is a lovely leading man. (“I think he should take his shirt off more often,” one theatergoer murmured.) André Ward brings a Harry Belafonte-esque lilt and ukulele to “Volcano,” while Don Sparks, with his warm chuckle of a voice, makes the barfly come alive, even as he spends Act 1 searching for his lost shaker of salt: Never has a Broadway song been given such a buildup — nor closed with as many beach balls.
You could do worse than waste away a couple of hours in “Margaritaville.”
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