'Holiday Inn': Theater Review

Most musicals are lucky to have one showstopping number. Holiday Inn, the new Broadway show adapted from the 1942 film starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, features two. One of them, "Shaking the Blues Away," sums up what this musical packed with 20 Irving Berlin songs succeeds in doing. So sweetly wholesome that you experience a sugar rush while watching it, the show is corny and predictable. But it will surely provide a happy diversion for stressed-out theatergoers during the holiday season, much like its similarly conceived predecessor, White Christmas, which received limited end-of-year Broadway runs in 2008 and 2009.

Previously seen at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House, the musical, co-written and directed by Gordon Greenberg, mainly follows the template of the beloved movie. Set in 1946, the story concerns song-and-dance team Jim Hardy (Bryce Pinkham, Tony-nominated for A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder) and Ted Hanover (High School Musical's Corbin Bleu) splitting up when Jim decides to ditch show business and run a farm in rural Connecticut. Jim hopes that their fellow singer, and his girlfriend, Lila (Megan Sikora), will give up the footlights and join him, but she opts to go out on the road with Ted instead.

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