Back to the Future: The Musical, directed by John Rando, stars Lucas Hallauer, David Josefsberg, Mike Bindeman, Zan Berube, Cartreze Tucker, and Ethan Rogers, and features a large ensemble. It’s playing at Shea’s Performing Arts Center, 646 Main St, Buffalo, NY, from June 24th through 29th | Tue–Fri at 7:30 PM, Sat at 2:00 & 8:00 PM, Sun at 1:00 & 6:30 PM. Tickets & Info: sheas.org | 716-847-0850
THUMBNAIL SKETCH:
Back to the Future: The Musical—with music and lyrics by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard, and a book by Bob Gale—is adapted from the 1985 film of the same name, directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Bob Gale. The show features original songs in addition to ones from the film (“The Power of Love,” “Earth Angel,” “Johnny B. Goode,” and “Back in Time”).
It is reasonably faithful to the film’s storyline. A small-town California teenager, Marty McFly, is thrown back into the 1950s when an experiment by his eccentric scientist friend, Doc Brown, goes awry. Marty travels through time in a modified DeLorean car, encounters young versions of his parents, and must make sure that they fall in love—or he and his siblings, Dave and Linda, will cease to exist. Even more pressing, Marty must return to his own time to save Doc Brown, who is afflicted by radiation poisoning after loading plutonium into the car’s reactor without adequate protection.
RUNTIME:
2 hours and 40 minutes with one 15-minute intermission
THE PLAYERS, THE PLAY, AND THE PRODUCTION:
I was extremely excited for this musical, as I had missed it on Broadway and was a fan of the movie from my childhood in the 1980s. Back to the Future and Michael J. Fox were huge back then. The touring production of the Broadway show landed and hit the ground running at Shea’s Main Stage Theatre on Tuesday evening. This show moves at a breakneck pace—sometimes so fast it drowns out the actual storytelling.
Like the film, it opens with irrepressible teen hero Marty McFly (Lucas Hallauer) visiting his friend Doc Brown’s lab, where he rocks out on a ukulele (“It’s Only a Matter of Time”). Marty then heads to an audition for a talent contest (“Audition/Got No Future”), hangs out with his girlfriend (“Wherever We’re Going”), talks to a clock tower preservation activist, has dinner with his family (“Hello, Is Anybody Home?”—shoutout to the very watchable and hilarious Fisher Lane Stewart as Dave McFly)… and then takes a trip 30 years into the past in Doc’s time-traveling DeLorean. There, he becomes entangled in a complicated love triangle with his mother and father. It is, in other words, the same as the film, with only a few minor plot changes.
Every scene is a showstopper, splashed with ridiculously limber and talented backing dancers. The choreography by Chris Bailey is eye-catching, particularly the athleticism in the 1950s dance number. Tim Hatley’s ever-changing, retina-searing, but dazzling sets add to the show’s momentum.
It’s a bit of a relentless rush, with almost no breathing space, and it feels heavily predicated on the idea that you already know Marty McFly from the film, where his character is eased in far more gradually. Hatley also serves as costume designer—outfits range from classic 1950s garb to the day-glo, colorful mid-1980s ensembles. There’s a nice consistency to his work…