Betty Boop: From Broadway to Islands of Adventure?
“Where is Betty? Betty ain’t here! We gotta find her; she flew the coop." This is not just a phrase that, out of context, makes me sound insane. Yet, it also is a singular line of songwriting that has been stuck in my head for upwards of 30 days. At this very point in time, I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up in a psychiatric facility due to my incessant singing of this one line.
The aforementioned Betty is, in fact, Betty Boop, the star of the new, aptly-titled Boop: The Musical, now playing at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway. Starring the iconic cartoon character from yesteryear, the show follows Betty as she transports to the real world, coming to terms with her own star power and, I kid you not, a subplot dealing with the mayoral race in New York City.
Boop is a little confused. The show doesn’t know what it fully wants to be and which characters to highlight. Alongside Betty is a love story between Gramps and an astrophysicist he met forty years prior when first testing out his teleportation device. Elsewhere, there’s the aforementioned corrupt mayoral race by way of female empowerment narrative that works in small doses, but when zooming out, one wonders if there were too many cooks in the kitchen.
Looking at the big picture, however, Boop is a success. It’s a large-scale, dance heavy, toe-tapping musical that thrives on a fun score and a star-making performance out of Jasmine Amy Rogers. Truly, it's rare to get to witness a star being born right in front of your very eyes, but what a gift. As I left the Broadhurst, singing “Where is Betty?" to anyone who would listen, I remembered a theatrical space that would benefit from something as infectious as this production and, luckily, it's currently vacant.
Toon Lagoon Amphitheater, located between Marvel Superhero Island and Toon Lagoon and Islands of Adventure, is a 2000-seat theatrical space that has sat vacant more than it has been properly utilized. Originally opening with the park, the theater initially hosted a show entitled Pandemonium Cartoon Circus. The 25 minute show included all the characters from the Sunday funnies alongside circus acts, allowing for each character to have their own time to shine.
Likely due to budget cuts and the lack of confidence in providing a sit-down show for guests which was quickly put together, the show closed after only nine months. Since then, it has been home to limited time experiences, rarely even including the toons that its land highlights.
It’s an odd, huge chunk of land to have stayed stagnant for so long. In a world where Universal has placed a large chunk of their time and energy recently on live entertainment, including two full-scale theater shows at Epic Universe, it remains befuddling to have such a large scale space unused. (Meanwhile, The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad ran for close to twenty years before its closure, but it’s another large-scale theatrical space rotting away on precious land within the park.)
All I could think about while leaving Boop: The Musical was my personal yearning for something within the same vein to make its way to Islands of Adventure. As time progresses, we have continually proved that live entertainment remains a key factor in people visiting, and returning, to Disney and Universal’s parks. If entertainment didn’t matter, we wouldn’t have a big scale parade and nighttime show at Universal Orlando in the midst of Epic Universe budgeting. We wouldn’t fill the Magic Kingdom with a medium-sized cavalcade, a daytime parade, and a nighttime parade after years of showing that entertainment matters.
Live performers are the lifeblood of a theme park experience, often being the key factor in guests creating memories that last a lifetime. Rides are important. Dining is essential. Yet, performance is transcendent. In the cast of Islands of Adventure, a current Tony-nominated show is scalable proof that the IP that’s already being utilized at their park can work in a theatrical format. Where is Betty? Hopefully heading to the Toon Lagoon Amphitheater.