Escape To Margaritaville

Exactly five lunar years after our last trip to New York City, Katie and I traveled to NYC last weekend and, while we were there, we saw Jimmy Buffett’s new Broadway musical, Escape To Margaritaville! Here is my spoiler-free review:

The Good

• The vocal talent is awesome – especially the women! If you’re a Buffett fan, it’s really cool to hear familiar songs sung with range, multi-part harmonies, and vibrato! It’s especially interesting to hear some classic Buffett songs sung by women, which makes for an entirely new tone – and even meaning – to songs you know by heart. I can’t wait to get my hands on the cast recording!
• The song list is a good mix of well-known hits and more obscure songs from the Buffett catalog. 
• The musical takes full advantage of the medium and creates some truly fantastic scenes. If you’re a Buffett fan, you’ve been waiting your entire life to see the full audio-visual realization of “Cheeseburger”, “Volcano”, and more – even if you didn’t know it! Seriously; a few of the music numbers are worth the price of admission all by themselves.
• Some parts of the show are just really, really fun. There is one scene, for example, that makes no sense whatsoever, and seems like more of a “Jimmy said that, if this is a Broadway show, it has to have THIS element in it,” but it still totally works because it’s so fun. The ending also does a really faithful job of recreating the experience of being at a Buffett concert – so much fun!
• The show is really self aware. It doesn’t take itself or its source material too seriously, which is very coherent with its fun tone. There is subtle – and not-so-subtle – political commentary slipped in too, which I really enjoyed.
• The show is loaded with references to Buffett songs. Sometimes those are paid off eventually with a musical number, but sometimes they are left as Easter eggs for fans. Because the show is still in previews, it’s possible that these references are actually “orphaned” setups for different musical numbers that we didn’t see in our show because they are still playing around with the final set list but, either way, I enjoyed all the additional references.
• There are some good characters and plot arcs – especially including some strong women!

The Bad

• Many of the songs stop prematurely; one or two verses are sung and then the actors return to their dialog. As I have blogged previously, Jimmy Buffett is a storyteller; each of his songs has its own narrative arc. Aborting a Buffett song before it reaches its conclusion felt unfulfilling to me.
• Many song lyrics were changed to fit the song into the overall narrative of the show. Some of these changes keep a song’s intent, but some of them completely change the song’s meaning. I totally get why they did it and, in some cases, I found it to be quite clever. In many cases, though, it subverted my expectations so kind of took me out of the song. 
• In a couple of places the show weaves multiple songs together into a revolving medley of sorts. Further to my point above about the song lyrics, in some ways I think it was quite clever (E.g., they blend together “Coconut Telegraph” and “Head Hurts / Feet Stink”, both of which march through the days of the week.) but overall it doesn’t quite work for me. I feel like it’s almost there, but its reach just exceeds its grasp. Again I understand why it was done for narrative purposes, but it came at the cost of the music.
• The crowd, at least at our show, was really timid. You could tell that many people really wanted to sing along but weren’t quite sure whether that was encouraged or even allowed. During a couple of numbers – and increasingly as the show progressed – people threw caution to the wind and belted it out, which was really fun. If the show could find a better way to make it clear early on if/when singing along is encouraged, I think it would really enhance the experience.
• There are some bad characters and plot arcs – unfortunately including the central love arc.

The Ugly

• Nothing to see here!

Final Thoughts