Marquis Theatre, New York

An island-based assembly of the hit-maker’s most loved tracks is an undemanding watch that could have benefited from more nuance

Escape to Margaritaville, the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical, has fallen out of its hammock and on to Broadway. As charming and lazy as a beachside siesta, it sticks 27 Buffett hits into a paint-by-numbers plot, pulls a Hawaiian shirt and a grigri necklace over the top and calls it a day.

Tully Mars (the name is borrowed from the hero of Buffett’s 2004 novel) is the paid entertainment at a rundown resort on an unnamed island. (Walt Spangler designed the pleasantly schlocky palm frond sets.) Tully spends his nights trying to keep the tourists dancing and his days romancing whichever cutie is booked on the next flight out.

But then Rachel (Alison Luff) arrives. She is, in the articulate words of one young man, “some kind of scientist or something”. Booked into Margaritaville on a bachelorette trip for her friend Tammy (Lisa Howard), Rachel is ready for a week of sun, sand and collecting soil samples from the nearby volcano.

Before you can say Son of a Son of a Sailor – OK, right after – Rachel has abandoned ecology for Tully’s bed. When she leaves, a volcano blows. (Of course a volcano blows, Buffett has a song called Volcano. Coincidentally, another volcano drives the plot of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, a few blocks away.) So Tully swings over to the mainland to win that some kind of scientist back.

The performers, directed with good humor and reasonable efficiency by Christopher Ashley, are mostly winning, particularly Howard’s exuberant Tammy and Rema Webb’s surly proprietress Marley. Paul Alexander Nolan, who made his Broadway debut as a tightly wound genius, isn’t a natural fit for Tully’s flip-flops, but he’s likable, as is Luff, in a bland goody two-shoes role. Still, there’s only so much they can do with the material.

The book is by TV writers Greg Garcia and Mike O’Malley, and its distinguishing feature is a punishing literalism. Each lyric about a tin cup or a chalice, carrot juice or bulgur wheat prefigures a joke or a plot point. One character actually spends the first act looking for his long lost shaker of salt. Are there sponge cakes and porch swings? Of course. Buffett is a poet of the workaday and its curaçao compensations, but even he allowed himself a metaphor now and then. Someone should tell the writers.

Buffett’s music, with its sea salt twang and working-for-the-weekend heart, has wide appeal. Well, somewhat wide. As a black entertainment lawyer says in what is easily the show’s best line: “Acoustic guitar, songs about the beach, hush puppy shoes: white people love that kinda shit.” (Buffett’s music is smarter and rangier than that, but it’s still a great joke.)

But are there enough parrotheads ready and willing to fill the Marquis Theatre? At a press preview, a singalong moment went south when only a small portion of the audience joined in on Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw. At least the mobbed concession stands, churning out piñaritas served by the glass or by the gallon, helped with the drunk part.

And Buffett himself, who leans out of a cabana to jam on an electric guitar during the curtain call, appeared to be having a very good time. He should. The show ends on a note of self-congratulation, arguing that if he wants to get the girl, Tully must leave island life and indolence behind. He has to stop goofing off and start racking up the radio hits. He has to stop being Tully Mars and start being Jimmy Buffett. No wasting away for him.

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