A ‘Beautiful Gateway Drug’ to Bobby Darin: Jonathan Groff & Cast Talk Bringing ‘Grit’ to the ‘Just in Time’ Broadway Cast Recording

“It’s benignant of similar being successful a semipermanent relationship,” Jonathan Groff muses of portraying the precocious Bobby Darin successful the Tony-nominated philharmonic Just successful Time. “Is this working? Is this not working? Should we proceed what’s happening here? My love, admiration, respect and passionateness for Bobby continues to deepen. The mode that helium lived the 37 years of his life, he’s a never-ending root of inspiration.”

Hot disconnected his Tony triumph for Merrily We Roll Along in 2024, Groff returned to Broadway successful April arsenic the Grammy-winning, Billboard Hot 100-topping popular chameleon down hits similar “Mack the Knife,” “Beyond the Sea” and “Dream Lover.” While the amusement has recovered a location astatine the Circle successful the Square Theatre for the past six months, the germ of this task began to instrumentality signifier overmuch earlier, successful 2017, calved retired of a kinship Groff felt with the precocious singer. “He conscionable innately had a existent old-school showbiz happening that I personally subordinate to,” Groff explains Billboard.

You mightiness person to squint, but similarities exist: Like Darin, Groff is simply a pupil of the Great American Songbook – and surviving impervious that successful the close hands and successful the close setting, aged songs tin beryllium arsenic electrical contiguous arsenic they’ve ever been. Like Darin, Groff enjoyed a mainstream breakthrough singing featherweight popular to a younker assemblage (was Glee his “Splish Splash?”) earlier rapidly demonstrating helium could bash truthful overmuch much to the wider world. And similar Darin, who played to cross-generational crowds during his lifetime, Groff is packing seats with everyone from kids (some wearing “I emotion Jesse St. James” shirts) to chap Millennials to 80-year-olds who caught the existent Darin onstage erstwhile they were young.

Darin was some a songwriter and an interpreter, which means the philharmonic palette of Just successful Time is expansive. There’s a satellite of quality betwixt the novelty stone of “Splish Splash” and the swinging, murderous “Mack the Knife,” but it’s each sonically unified acknowledgment to a tight, adept set of pros led by euphony supervisor and arranger Andrew Resnick, who ensures that Just successful Time feels little similar Broadway and much similar a Las Vegas residency from the Rat Pack era.

“There’s nary electronics — we wanted it to consciousness similar nary substance what, a unrecorded set was playing,” Resnick says. Working with manager Alex Timbers, Resnick – who has been with the task since its 2017 genesis astatine the 92nd Street Y – helped find which songs would beryllium deployed arsenic storytelling devices and which ones arsenic jaw-dropping showcases. “Mack the Knife,” the Brecht/Weill tune from 1928’s The Threepenny Opera that Darin took to the apical of the Hot 100 for 9 weeks successful 1959, is decidedly the latter: “66 years later, it swings conscionable arsenic hard,” Resnick says.

“Andrew truly is 1 of those euphony directors that listens to your dependable and shapes an statement to your talents and your vibes specifically,” says Gracie Lawrence, who earned a Tony nom for her portrayal of Connie Francis successful the amusement (she precocious near the accumulation to absorption connected her sibling-duo set Lawrence). To that end, Resnick added a cardinal alteration infinitesimal for Lawrence successful Francis’ signature hit, “Who’s Sorry Now.” “I deliberation it was specified a astute communicative thought to person a show-stopping infinitesimal successful Connie’s archetypal scene, truthful that we permission feeling similar we’ve established that she’s an important idiosyncratic musically to Bobby and vice versa. Andrew and Alex’s choices were truthful communicative driven, it doesn’t consciousness superfluous,” Lawrence says.

Prior to Francis’ decease connected July 16 astatine 87, the popular fable – the past surviving idiosyncratic to beryllium portrayed successful this philharmonic — sent Lawrence and Groff signed photographs arsenic gifts connected the show’s opening nighttime (April 26). Lawrence said the archetypal amusement aft her decease was “all the much real,” and a reminder that “we person specified a respons...