In heavy times, we can all use a little nonsense. (The good kind.) Who better to offer respite from the angry orange man who lives in the White House than a happy-go-lucky sponge who lives in a pineapple on the ocean floor? Launched in 1999 by Stephen Hillenburg, a former marine biologist whose interest in aquatic life was uniquely unbridled, the Nickelodeon cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” introduced the world to a community known as Bikini Bottom, populated by scheming plankton, entrepreneurial crabs, and (least explicably) a karate-trained Texan squirrel in an astronaut suit. Needless to say, it became a multibillion-dollar franchise.
The phenomenon has now reached Broadway, in a musical extravaganza at the Palace, whose boards were once trod by Judy Garland and Harry Belafonte. And why not? SpongeBob is every inch an icon, though his dreams are humble. “You’re just a simple sponge, boy. And yet somehow you don’t seem to absorb very much,” Mr. Krabs (Brian Ray Norris), his boss at the Krusty Krab, tells him. But our hero (Ethan Slater, in his sponge-worthy Broadway début) yearns to prove himself, and finally gets the chance when a volcano threatens underwater doom. Here’s where the real twist comes: the show is very good. This is largely thanks to Tina Landau, its conceiver and director, who fills the stage with visual wit, from giant Rube Goldberg machines that spit out bouncy boulders to David Zinn’s relentlessly clever costumes and sets, festooned with tinsel, neon, and bubbles. Sonically, the show is full of invention, with a live Foley artist who deploys gurgles and squeaks. An all-star roster of artists supplied original songs, among them Steven Tyler, the Flaming Lips, John Legend, Cyndi Lauper, and Sara Bareilles—but the standout is “I’m Not a Loser,” by They Might Be Giants, an eleven-o’clock tap number for one Squidward Q. Tentacles (Gavin Lee, using all four legs) and a chorus of sea anemones.
For a property so giddily absurd, “SpongeBob” has been co-opted to serve various political agendas over the years; SpongeBob’s sexual orientation has been a topic of evangelical fascination. Kyle Jarrow’s jaunty script hints, without preaching, at issues of racial prejudice, environmentalism, and government corruption. But it’s Patrick Star (Danny Skinner), SpongeBob’s starfish sidekick, who voices the salient question of our age: “Is mayonnaise an instrument?” ♦
