Comparisons are unavoidable.
Portraying Bobby Darin in “Just in Time,” Jonathan Groff played the singer-actor as a nice guy. Jeremy Jordan replaces Groff and plays Darrin as a bad boy, which is much closer to the real man.
Indeed, the musical’s book, by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, keeps telling us that Darin is full of the devil. Not only was he difficult to work with, the parents of girlfriend Connie Francis and wife Sandra Dee didn’t want anything to do with this singing satyr. As they saw him, Darin was a stud who wanted just one thing from their respective daughters.
“Just in Time” is based on an “original concept” by Ted Chapin and Jonathan Groff, and one of their worst ideas – or did it come from Leight and Oliver? – is a bit at the top of the show that had Groff, and now Jordan, telling us about his own childhood.
Jordan tells us from the Circle in the Square stage that, as a kid, he was “shy and nerdy” — unlike the real Darin. Who knew? Groff, on the other hand, told us that he used to wear his mother’s “pumps” — unlike the real Darin. Obviously.
When I first reviewed “Just in Time” in April 2025, I wrote about being “gobsmacked” by Groff’s sartorial remark. It was an admission that his range as an actor had its limits: He couldn’t give us anything resembling a real playboy. Years ago, I saw Ruth Negga deliver a riveting Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse, and I don’t recall her having to tell us she wasn’t a natural Danish blond.
What Groff had going for him with “Just in Time” was a surprise career move. Heretofore, his roles on Broadway had been pretty serious as far as musicals go. He starred in the original production of “Spring Awakening,” played King George in “Hamilton” and won a Tony for his turn in the first Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” He could definitely act and sing, but none of those shows required him to be a dazzling song-and-dance man. “Just in Time” did, and his performance was both unexpected and a revelation.
Watching him, I kept wishing he’d chuck “Just in Time” and, instead, present himself in an old-fashioned musical revue where he could just sing and dance, backed up by a bunch of gorgeous showgirls. But Bobby Darin he was not. He was just too nice.
Jordan’s Broadway career is different. His first big hit was Disney’s “Newsies” in 2012, and it was nothing but razzle-dazzle. Even in his more recent performance in Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of “Floyd Collins,” he brought showbiz glitz to one of musical theater’s most depressing, claustrophobic stories. Trapped in a cave, Jordan’s doomed character kept himself alive through sheer force of will, which the actor made palpable with his tremendous vocals. Jordan’s performance was one of the best in musical theater that I’ve ever seen.
What he does in “Just in Time” is not surprising, but again, he’s simply superb.
Alex Timbers continues to direct, and has assembled a cast that is superior to the original, especially Olivia Holt’s Connie Francis, Carrie St. Louis’ Sandra Dee and Debbie Gravitte, who brings real wit and spunk to the role of Darin’s very determined “mother.”
