“Back to the Future” didn’t need to be a musical
Last week was the final show of the 2024-2025 Broadway season at Shea's. It was one of the shows I was really looking forward to: "Back to the Future: The Musical." I was interested in seeing how the movie translated to the stage. The answer: not that well.
I won't recap the plot of "Back to the Future." If you haven't seen the movie, I don't know what you've been doing with your life.
The musical was just okay. With two exceptions, the songs were not memorable. "Gotta Start Somewhere" and "Pretty Baby" were the only ones that I enjoyed. "Pretty Baby" is the best song in the whole show. It's an homage to the 1950's Do-Op genre. Marty has just woken up in Lorraine's bedroom, and she starts singing about how she is falling in love with "Calvin." It fits the aesthetic of the 50s and captures Lorraine's obsession with Marty.
On a technical level, the musical was impressive. A DeLorean appears on stage multiple times, serving as the show's highlight. To show it driving or traveling through time, it moves around on stage in front of a giant screen. It was one of the elements that they needed to nail, and thankfully they did. The big moment comes at the end when Doc comes back to get Marty to go "back to the future." As in the movie, the DeLorean rises off the ground and flies. On Broadway, it went over the audience; it didn't at Shea's, but it was still very cool.
There are changes from the movie, and I am okay with that. It's just that some of the changes they made were unnecessary. My biggest complaint is that the DeLorean is now voice-activated and only responds to Doc Brown's voice. It is an unnecessary complication to the story. In the movie, Marty changes the time he goes back to save Doc Brown. In the musical, Doc sets the time; it happens to be the same time as Marty sets in the movie. This takes Doc's fate out of Marty's hands. In the movie, changing the time is the last chance he has to save Doc; he can't do that in the musical.
The other change I didn't like was the circumstances around Doc's death. In the movie, he is shot by the terrorists he stole the plutonium from. In the musical, his radiation suit doesn't protect him enough, and he dies of radiation poisoning. Are you telling me that the man who made a time machine out of a DeLorean wouldn't have a properly working radiation suit? It was a leap in logic that I just couldn't make, even in a story with time travel.
The musical is fun but forgettable. You are better off just watching the 1985 masterpiece instead.
