The Connector | 1hr 45mins. No intermission. | MCC Theater| 511 W 52nd Street | 646–506-9393

Musicals love a con artist. Harold Hill, Max Bialystock, the fraudsters and flimflammers of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Catch Me If You Can—flamboyant prevaricators really inspire show tunes. In 2016, an arguably more nuanced fibber arrived with Dear Evan Hansen, in which the awkward titular teen became social-media famous through deceit. DEH casts a twitchy shadow over The Connector, the wan, predictable tale of a cub reporter who fabricates his way to success at a prestigious magazine. Indeed, the lead role of Ethan Dobson belongs to Ben Levi Ross, who played Evan on Broadway two years ago. (Even the character names echo.) But whereas the Pasek & Paul hit evoked sympathy for their troubled antihero, The Connector is a tedious shuffle to Ethan’s inevitable unmasking. With songs.

No spoiler alert needed. Since we already know that director Daisy Prince got the initial concept from the Stephen Glass publishing scandal, Ethan’s career is fated to flop. Glass was a clever thing fresh out of college who won the admiration of editors at The New Republic, until they realized that his too-good-to-be-true political and cultural exposés were…yeah, made up. This all went down in the mid– to late ’90s, roughly two centuries ago in publishing years. (In 2003, the whole saga was recounted in a novel by Glass and as well as a movie.) Today, the tale of authorial hubris in a world with editorial standards seems downright quaint, as media smolders on a bonfire of algorithms while AI weaponizes disinformation for the illiterate.

Book writer Jonathan Marc Sherman........

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