Car horns can honk around Times Square, but they can’t boop-boop-de-doop like Betty Boop can. Broadway lights can sparkle, but not like Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop can. She doesn’t just anchor Boop! The Musical. She owns it. For that alone, it’s worth seeing.
That, and an underused but still ridiculously charming marionette of Pudgy, Betty’s dog.
The rest of Boop! The Musical plays out by the numbers and too often underwritten. When Rogers is on stage, whether singing, dancing, or just acting, you can almost believe the classic cartoon character has come to life and smoothly adjusted to life in 2025.
Opening like a Betty Boop cartoon with a Fleischer Studios title card, the show drops us right into a busy day/week/month of Betty making movies. It’s a little timey wimey as she sings “A Little Versatility,” switching from role to role standing behind a paper doll version of her body. Rogers bursts out of it, breaking into an old-fashioned tap number and revealing the actual studio around her in living black and white.
Tired of the rut her stardom has become, she goes home to Grampy (Stephen DeRogers) and Pudgy (Phillip Huber). Conveniently, Grampy has had a dimension-spanning invention under wraps in the living room for 40 years or so. That could take Betty away for a vacation, but he cautions her not to use it. Which of course she immediately does when he falls asleep.
Landing in the midst of New York Comic-Con (with cosplay mostly better than Times Square), most people just think Betty is a dedicated fan. Handsome passerby Dwayne (Ainsley Melham) helps her get her bearings before massive fan Trisha (Angelica Hale) fangirls.
Let’s pause. The script positions Betty as a world-famous icon. Not just as a cartoon whose image is everywhere (which does track with the real world), but as one with a huge following for her cartoons in 2025. Is she a symbol of feminine power? That’s open for discussion. But Trisha certainly thinks so, singing “Portrait of Betty.”
Whenever the show puts weight like that on Betty Boop, it just gets a little confusing. She’s a symbol on Earth, and at the same time, she’s an immortal from a world that quite literally revolves around her. And if she doesn’t return, that world will disappear. Cue the deus ex Grampy, who has visited Earth before and fallen in love with astrophysicist Valentina (Faith Prince).
Boop! The Musical is at its best when it just lets things be frothy. The character made her biggest splash in a time when cartoons were absolutely music driven, and the score by David Foster nods to those origins while giving a healthy infusion of poppy jazz and sheer Broadway listenability. Foster didn’t even hide Dwayne’s solo number “She Knocks Me Out” is ready for Michael Buble.
The history and reputation of Betty Boop lets the show get away with a lot, though occasionally throws in trivia that’s best not to notice. A few lines reference that Betty Boop was originally a dog. Her original sidekicks Bimbo the dog and Ko Ko the Clown appear on the proscenium arch, but don’t even get a moment in the show. Though Grampy was a big Fleischer Studios star, his outsized importance to the plot and romance with Valentina feel more like the producers got a Tony-winning comedienne and struggled to find a way to spotlight her.
Perhaps ironically, in a show about how the world loves Betty Boop, it’s the love stories that seem rushed and again, best not to think too hard. Because the ultimate implication of Boop! The Musical isn’t just that she’s immortal, but that she’s the god of her world. And we know full well that Patti Lupone would have something to say about that.
Cynicism and criticism aside, Boop! The Musical still is exactly what a Broadway production wants to be – something tourist families will want to catch because it’s a heck of a spectacle, inoffensive, and bubbly. Rogers gives an absolutely star-making performance, but now that she’s created the role, other powerhouse ingenues can step in and hold this production together for years to come.
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