(Or you could indulge in some illegal inhalation, although I didn’t say that.) That would be to immerse yourself in random (preferably early) episodes of the series, and then marvel at how the creative team here replicates their seemingly inimitable tone and substance. But if you are obliged to accompany one of the “Sponge”-happy types listed above, might I suggest you do what I did? If you are none of the above, you will find your patience sorely tested. In other words, you will probably adore this musical if: a) “SpongeBob” was a formative influence of your childhood b) you are a stoner who tokes up to watch reruns of the show on YouTube (categories a and b are not mutually exclusive) or c) if you are (like my date for this show) a parent of “SpongeBob”-bingeing progeny and found its sensibility crept into, and wallpapered, your weary mind. Or a five-year-old with an obsessive-compulsive attention to detail and a budget of the reported $20 million invested in this production. playpen-aquarium as it might have been conceived by an industrious five-year-old. Giant plastic party cups and pool noodles are combined in immense clusters to evoke underwater flora and fauna, with matching costumes that might have been assembled from Salvation Army bins. Zinn shows the wonders that can be worked on everyday rec-room items by hyper-magnification and coats of psychedelic color. Similarly, in recreating the series’ submarine town of Bikini Bottom, Mr. Exhibit A is the punning physical form of the animated SpongeBob himself, which is that of a familiar household object, not a specimen of aquatic zoology. Zinn’s aesthetic combines the literal-mindedness and repetitively riffing wildness of a toddler’s fantasy life. Like that of the original television show, created by Stephen Hillenburg and first aired in 1999, Mr. By whom I mean the designer David Zinn, whose sets and costumes raise the bar for trippy visuals in mainstream theater. Slater, I should hasten to add, shares the stage with a peer in capturing exactly the innocently idiotic spirit of the Nickelodeon television series - and $13 billion retail merchandising empire - that inspired this lavish production. Christian Bale, and all you other body-morphing Method boys. Slater is SpongeBob to the tips of whatever the underwater phyla equivalents of fingers are. (He wears suspendered plaid trousers, with a shirt and tie.) And he’s playing a sea creature from a television children’s show, for God’s sake, one that appears to be a bright yellow, rectangular kitchen sponge.īut though he is neither square-shaped nor visibly jaundiced, I, for one, never doubted that Mr. Slater, making his Broadway debut in Tina Landau’s exhaustingly imaginative production, achieves this metamorphosis sans prosthetics, skin dye or a facsimile costume. How many of those legions of figures who gambol through stage adaptations of animated movies - teapots, lions, fake Russian princesses, ad infinitum - seem to have been transliterated from the screen without any dilution of their inked-in essence? Slater plays the title role in “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” the ginormous giggle of a show that opened on Monday night. For what it’s worth - and we’re talking millions of dollars here - you are never going to see as convincing an impersonation of a two-dimensional cartoon by a three-dimensional human as that provided by Ethan Slater at the Palace Theater.
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