Oftentimes, singers have the gift of reconstituting songs and making them iconic, then become celebrated for doing it. One example is Bobby Darin (1936-1973), who took the droll, sluggish “Mack the Knife” from Kurt Weill’s Three Penny Opera, and with a jazzy, upbeat swing, gave it a reverential life of its own. A singer, songwriter, and actor, Darin ambitiously sang all music styles from swing to folk, from rock and roll to country music. He played three instruments, won two Grammy awards and a Golden Globe in a fifteen year period before he left this earth, only to win more awards posthumously. For his efforts, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1990) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1999).

The chronicle of his life manifested a candle burning at both ends to accomplish whatever he could in his short lifespan. Just in Time starring Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darin shines a spotlight on what made Darin a consummate performer, as he reinvented his career by adjusting to the times. Key to this production is Groff’s winning, adorable persona and uplifting and empathetic approach to portraying Darin’s mystique.

With an 11-piece band accompanying him and fine orchestrations by Andrew Resnick, this is an incredible show right out of the gate, though the book by Warren Light and Isaac Oliver based on an original concept by Ted Chapin cannot cover all of the salient information about Darin’s life for purists. However, it indeed is enough and a must-see. The exceptional Just in Time, developed and directed by Alex Timbers currently runs until November 30th at Circle in the Square.

To represent Darin’s ethos the production places the star in his favored venue, the nightclub. With set design by Derek McLane, Justin Townsend’s lighting design and Peter Hylenski sound design, Circle in the Square Theatre is transformed into both an exclusive nightclub and swank, intimate cabaret. There, Groff singularly portrays Darin’s trajectory in what has perhaps wrongly been limited as a “jukebox bio musical.”

The stunning sets around which Groff and the cast perform and enact more intimate scenes, open another aspect of the Darin persona. The immersive nightclub with two sections also converts to other settings with the use of a scrim and props. The floor area holds a cabaret-style seating arena where Groff and the others act amidst the patrons seated at tables. The multi-tiered stage of steps includes a dancing area banked on either side by the band, led by Andrew Resnick. Resnick plays piano, and supervises the music he has arranged which is vibrant, updated, resonant and heady.

Groff performs in both areas, but the showpiece numbers are on the higher levels where Darin’s Sirens dance, sing and perform with him in finely tuned, tightly choreographed numbers by Shannon Lewis. Darin’s glittering, alluring assistants include Valeria Yamin, Christine Cornish and Julia Grondin. Interestingly, theirs is an economy of movement as they surround Groff/Darin and join him with verve and style within the multi-levels of the set.

This design is exceptional and reflects the tenor of restraint, an ironic, perhaps meaningful limitation. Darin had severe health issues throughout his life and the knowledge that death was near, a terrible psychological/emotional/physical limitation, nevertheless spurred him on with a driving urgency. Darin pushed himself and everyone around him. He was about, “having a lot of living to do” because of his rheumatic heart. Despite his “mother’s” (the wonderful Michele Pawk), adjurations that the doctor told him nonsense that he would die in his teenage years, Darin took the doctor’s warnings “to heart.” He daily lived with death, and using the warning like a stoic’s “memento mori,” inspired himself to “live to the fullest.”

If anything, that is a theme of Just in Time. It is a riff on the idea that our time is limited and we must make the most of it with the gifts we have, as Bobby Darin did.

Just in Time originated as The Bobby Darin Story, a series of five concerts in 2018 at the 92nd Street Y, starring Groff as Darin. Since then its book and Timbers’ development and direction manifested a production with flowing, urgent forward momentum. Groff/Darin freezes the action with a “snap of his fingers” to add briskly paced narrative humor. These asides and direct addresses to the audience unfold Darin’s life story between upbeat club numbers dated for the time, but redirected for our time via Resnick’s arrangements. The entire production is set up as a series of night-club acts, and a stage performance to familiarize non fans with the man and his career.

However, before we discover Darin’s ambition and death-spur that propelled him, Groff is introduced as himself and assumes the relaxed, dressed to the nines (Catherine Zuber’s costume design), carefree, Groff-styled night-club persona. Groff twits the audience, making them his confidante, grounding it for his future direct addresses that will follow as a device that cycles through Darin’s life events briskly. These cover his childhood, the start of his career writing songs for Connie Frances, their relationship and break-up, his hits, the record company bosses, his revolutionary stylization of “Mack the Knife” and beyond to his relationship and marriage to Sandra Dee, its end, and his reinvention after he goes bankrupt.

As Groff zips and zags through the retrospective of Darin’s too brief life, we follow the whirlwind. Occasionally, we glimpse through the pull back of the curtain into his failing health, as Groff’s Darin initializes the stresses of his broken marriage and the revelation of a family secret that devastated him and most probably impacted his health.

In the opening set up of crooning songs “This Could be the Start of Something Big,” “Just in Time,” and lead in to the story of Darin’s life with the vamp of “Beyond the Sea,” Groff’s interpretations are sensational. Then, the audience is off and running with Groff’s self effacing line, “Whether you’re a fan of Bobby Darin, or one of the twelve people who watched “Mindhunter” – it doesn’t matter how I got you. All that matters is that you’re here and, tonight, you’re mine.”

And no joke, that’s the truth. We go with Groff down Darin’s memory lane, meeting his sweetheart that was not to be, Connie Francis (the sensational Gracie Lawrence), his “sister” always concerned for his health (Emily Bergl), his loving, show business influential “mother” (Michelle Pawk), and wife Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen), among others who fill in various roles (Joe Barbara, Lance Roberts, Caesar Samayoa). As swiftly and smoothly as the first act spools, the second act covers his relationship with Sandra Dee, giving it short shrift, along with Darin’s political endeavor helping Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Darin was present at the Ambassador Hotel and suffered another devastation at Kennedy’s death.

The show concludes with Groff/Darin, back in the nightclub where he fits best after a few years of resettlement. As the final capstone song, the production ends with “Once in a Lifetime/That’s All” as Groff powerfully, forcefully pulls out all the stops and his closest family and friends give remarks upon learning of Darin’s death after open heart surgery. Groff concludes with poignant remarks, “Every breath we take is a gift we get to open. It isn’t enough. And yet, it is so much.” Groff back in his own skin, makeup off, in his own robust soul, passionately ends the gobsmacking evening with, “Thanks for spending this time with us. Goodnight. I love you.” And the audience gives love back with a resounding standing ovation.

Just in Time is a fabulous seduction, memorializing the life and times of Bobby Darin through Jonathan Groff’s being and perspective. To say he channels Darin limits the depth of the production. The separation between the men is always present and that is what makes this production rise above a “jukebox bio musical.” None of the songs are jukebox, but reformulated. None of the patter and narrative are crassly biographical, but more at symbolic and synoptic, like a review with song twists to elucidate the events and key turning points throughout Darin’s life. Time and effort have been taken to thoughtfully render the production’s success to a new crowd of Darin fans.

Just in Time runs 2 hours 25 minutes with one intermission at Circle in the Square. https://justintimebroadway.com/