CATCH A ‘THIEF’
Fun for the teen set — without cell phones
Ah, to be Percy Jackson, a middleschooler in the throes of a fantastical quest! Sure beats worrying about how many views your Snapchat story got.
He might not get the prestige ink long commanded by Harry Potter and his celeb crew, but 12-year-old Percy is, in fact, a rock star among the portion of the tween set that can actually still put down their phones.
Percy’s thing is that he is half-mortal and half a deity. And the kids love him because he is so relatable and Evan Hansen-angsty, a lovable outsider, neither fish nor fowl, always ready with an intense ballad, forever trying to come home.
Percy’s exploits in a world of Greek mythology have sold well over a million copies of author Rick Riordan’s series since its 2005 publication, thus explaining why “The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical,” is one of the few family attractions that producers think can now command Broadway prices.
You certainly can see why Rob Rokicki and Joe Tracz decided to turn “The Lightning Thief,” at the Longacre Theatre, into a musical. The story involves a young man trying to find his dad (a mostly absent god) and eventually learning that his mom was the one who actually did all the heavy lifting to raise him. A good moral lesson for a tuner, especially since, along the way, Percy fights various perils and acquires a posse of similarly conflicted pals.
Plus your kids get to learn about classical mythology.
All that said, Broadway is Broadway and you wish that the producers had amped up the cheesy production values from the prior national tour. The show needed a visual overhaul for the main stream, middle-schoolers being as deserving of Midtown sophistication as anyone else.
The performances are solid enough. The lead, Chris McCarrell, attracted squeals of squirmy delight in my row and the supporting players like Kristin Stokes, Jalynn Steele and, especially, James Hayden Rodriguez, are a lot of fun.
But truth ain’t really in the building here: The show can’t drop the broad strokes when the material most demands something more. The show is very adept with its tricks, many of which emanate from the flexible voice box of Ryan Knowles. It’s fun. But these colors only take us so far.
Kids love Harry Potter because J.K. Rowling refused to dispense facile bromides and instead trusted them with complexity and ambiguity. And Potterland has always showed the punters how their hard-earned cash has been spent for their enjoyment.
Those are the lessons “The Lightning Thief ” has to learn. You know, along the way.