I have the same problem with Just In Time as I do with the CD of Bobby Darin's greatest hits that I bought during one of my early summers in the Pines: there are only a few songs I really want to hear, including "Mack The Knife," one of the first 45 rpm singles that my parents bought me after the Bronx crooner sang it on the hair-tousling Ed Sullivan Show in 1959, when I was five. The recording falls early enough in Darin's career that it's performed before intermission, as is "Beyond The Sea," my other listen-on-repeat, then a fairly new innovation.
That said, nearly everything else about the production, rises to the occasion of Jonathan Groff's finger-snapping, hip shaking, time-stopping inhabitation (think Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz, a superior show), minus what likely was Darin's toxic masculinity. Not that there's anything wrong with that in this flashback context: you might be a little toxic yourself if you were told you'd be dead at 16, the match that lights the nonpareil nightclub performer's relentless, all-consuming drive to conquer show business in nearly all its forms. I'd forgotten that Darin had been nominated for an Oscar in Captain Newman, MD, a 1963 movie I plan to watch again on You Tube.
The Circle in the Square has been believably transformed into the Copacabana, the venue where Darin belatedly found his happy place before finally kicking the bucket at age 37, successfully recovering from a brief foray into attempted folk music relevance which does yield the oh-so-poignant "If I Were A Carpenter," sung to ex-wife Sandra Dee (!); Alex Timbers' reliably imaginative staging makes full use of theater-in-the-round and cleverly overcomes many of the jukebox musical's hoariest cliches, especially during "Splish Splash," where Groff once again proves he can do anything, including look smokin' hot in a Speedo; the kaleidoscopically colorful Fifties and Sixties costumes; and the supporting performances--including the Sirens, whose fluid, if often soaked, choreography appears to have been inspired by the original production of Dreamgirls--all have the ring of backstage truth.
And during the book's slower "and then" moments, especially in the first act, I had plenty of time to fantasize about the uses I could make of my "Mack The Knife" single. Should I wait outside and ask Groff to autograph it? Or, since I'm in the de-accessioning stage of my life anyway, should I mail with a handwritten note informing him that our brief bicycle encounter last spring on Fifth Avenue tops the list of my lifetime celebrity encounters?
Yep, I'm a major Groff stan (you would be, too, if you re-watched HBO's incomparable Looking as recently as I have and paid top dollar to see Merrily We Roll Along), even more obsessed than my mother was with Darin. And, believe it or not, it being able to confirm my memory that she caught his performance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in August 1960 after we visited Disneyland would give me almost as much joy.