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 any sort of reality, the show developed a considerable 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 and closing there just over two months later was instead a weird, alternate version of the story of that fictional musical’s creation, marked by the addition of extraneous new characters (plus the renaming of several others) and new plot lines, which seems to have confused and disappointed the TV show’s loyal followers. The cast album receives a higher rating from this reviewer than would the show as a whole only because the score heard in isolation, while lacking originality, is nevertheless far superior to the messy, silly, book by Bob Martin and Rick Elice, which strained credibility even further beyond the breaking point than did the scripts of the TV series. 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 closely apes the melodies, harmonies, arrangements, etc. of already existing songs was appreciated far less 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, but there are some other moments in the score that may also make you think, “Haven’t I heard this before?” 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