NBC’s Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical! stink, stank, stunk

If musical theater is an acquired taste, then children’s musical theater is really limited to a particular palate. America got a crash course in that fact courtesy of NBC’s Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical! broadcast—the peacock network’s first musical venture since 2018’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert. While most of these recent live musicals have been geared towards a family audience (give or take Fox’s Rent: Live), The Grinch is the first to be aimed primarily at those 12 and under. This musical adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Christmas classic began life at Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Company in 1994, where it was designed as a breezy, immersive 85-minute distraction for kids. And while the show went on to have a successful seasonal run on Broadway as well as several popular national tours and annual regional productions, whatever magic it conjures up in the shared communal space of a holiday theater very much doesn’t translate to the small screen.
By far the biggest problem with NBC’s Grinch is the musical source material itself. Mel Marvin’s painfully tuneless score makes Seussical look like a masterpiece in comparison, with the show’s only memorable songs pulled from the 1966 and 2000 film adaptations. And the unnecessarily convoluted script by Timothy Mason isn’t much better. This version of The Grinch is narrated by an older version of the Grinch’s dog Max (Denis O’Hare) reflecting back on his life as a younger pup (Booboo Stewart) living at the mercy of his hairy green owner (Matthew Morrison). The show has little in the way of logical character arcs, meaningful themes, or even basic plot momentum. And between the rhyming dialogue and a whole underdeveloped subplot for Cindy-Lou Who (Amelia Minto) and her multi-generational family, the scattered production could barely get into a storytelling groove before another commercial break would come along to break up the flow.