I’m afraid this was yet another misfire from La Jolla for me — this venue has really struggled to put out consistently good material in the last year or two.
The problems start with Ashley directing, though they certainly don’t end with him. I tend to find him bland and uninspired (Come From Away was a notable exception in this regard), and this was more of the same. It looks cheap, the blocking and staging is boring and mediocre, and there’s simply nothing inspired about it.
That’s basically how the show is, too. You’ve seen this before. You have seen it done better and with more finesse and intrigue, with better songs and writing and performances. It’s a nothing burger of a musical. On performances, it’s just… hard to build a star vehicle around a mediocre actress. JoJo is trying her best here, and she’s not bad per se; she just doesn’t have the charisma to carry a show that asks her to be onstage for basically the entire thing. She sings it well, luckily. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about Kritzer, who was in rather shockingly poor voice the night I saw it. This seemed uncharacteristic to me; I know her as a powerhouse vocalist, so she may have been having an off night or sick or something but she did not sound good.
There’s not much else to say. It’s not bad, it’s not offensive, it’s just bland. The book is bland and the songs are bland and the performances are bland. I didn’t leave the show angry, I just left feeling nothing. Maybe that’s worse.
Updated On: 11/8/25 at 03:39 PM
