Original Broadway Cast, 2025 (Concord Theatricals) (2 / 5) Smash was a short-lived TV series about a group of people trying to put together a Broadway musical based on the life and career of Marilyn Monroe, with two women vying for the title role. Although it bore scant resemblance to reality, the show developed a loyal fan base during its relatively brief run in 2012-2013, which prompted some of those involved in its creation (including producer Steven Spielberg) to float the idea of an actual Broadway musical inspired by it. Some fans of the series assumed and/or hoped  the Broadway production would be a fully staged, complete version of Bombshell, the show-within-the show in Smash. But what ended up opening at the Imperial Theatre in the spring of 2025 was instead a weird, alternate version of the story of the creation of that fictional musical, marked by the addition of extraneous new plot lines and characters plus the renaming of several others, which appears to have had the effect of confusing and disappointing the TV show’s loyal followers. The cast album receives a higher rating from this reviewer than the show itself would only because the score heard in isolation, while lacking originality, is nevertheless vastly superior — or, to put it another way, not nearly so unsatisfying — as the messy, silly, credibility-straining book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice. The songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are very well crafted and undeniably catchy, even if the team’s style of writing In a pastiche mode that often closely apes the melodies, arrangements, etc. of previously written songs was far less well appreciated in Smash (and in their previous Broadway flop Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) than it was in the mega-hit Shaiman-Wittman musical Hairspray. (The most obvious borrowing here is the opening melody of the song “Let Me Be Your Star,” which sounds an awful lot like the tune of “Bella Notte” from the Disney film Lady and the Tramp.) A talented cast led by Robyn Hurder, Caroline Bowman, Brooks Ashmanskas, Bella Coppola, Krysta Rodriguez, and John Behlmann does a fine job with several enjoyable numbers carried over from the TV show, including “Second Hand White Baby Grand,” “Don’t Forget Me,” “They Just Keep Moving The Line,” and “(I Wanna Be A) Smash,” as well as some new songs of varying quality. — Michael Portantiere