J2 Spotlight: Smile

The brilliant librettist Howard Ashman laid the groundwork for the renaissance of musical theater in recent decades. But after when he wrote Little Shop of Horrors with Alan Menken, and before he reunited with Menken to bring Disney musicals back to life with The Little Mermaid, he made his Broadway debut with a flop: Smile his 1986 collaboration with composer Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line), which ran for fewer than 50 performances and left no cast album behind for its trouble. The J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company—which, like Encores! and Musicals in Mufti, specializes in brief rivals of underexposed musicals of yore—christens its fifth season by revisiting this cult musical comedy about tensions, pressions and friendships at a California beauty contest (adapted from the 1975 film). Sophie Stromberg and Bridget Delaney play the two contestants we get to know best, and Lauren Weinberg and Christopher Deprophetis play the frazzled couple running the show. Company cofounder Robert W. Schneider directs.