‘We’re All Here Today, in This Present Moment, and Anything Can Happen’: Jonathan Groff on the Urgent Intimacy of Just in Time

Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, September 2023.

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Eight years ago, Jonathan Groff’s friend Ted Chapin took him to see Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 and then to dinner at Orso. There, Chapin, who was producing the Lyrics and Lyricists series at the 92nd Street Y at the time, asked if Groff might like to perform in an upcoming edition featuring the songs of Bobby Darin.

The question led Groff down a YouTube rabbit hole as he watched clip after clip of the genre-busting singer-songwriter. Growing up in Pennsylvania, Groff had heard Darin’s hits, like “Mack the Knife” and “Splish Splash,” but he hadn’t realized they came from the same voice—and wasn’t convinced he’d be able to embody his energy and versatility.

“I was completely taken by Bobby’s primal ferocity, even on these old black-and-white clips of him performing,” Groff tells Vogue. “There was a real presence and passion. This wasn’t just a rock-and-roll guy or a crooner singing songs. There was real connection in his performance style.”

When he eventually decided to move ahead with the concert, Groff began fleshing out his own primal connection to Darin. Inspired by Natasha’s immersiveness and high off the club atmosphere of Here Lies Love at the Public Theater, he contacted the latter’s director, Alex Timbers, and got to work on what would eventually become Just in Time, which celebrated its opening on Broadway on Wednesday night at the Circle in the Square Theater.

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To aid his transformation, Groff—who won a Tony for last season’s brilliant and wildly popular revival of Merrily We Roll Along—quickly learned to play both the drums and piano and took 10 weeks of dance lessons with choreographer Shannon Lewis, whose work makes its Broadway debut with the show. But unlike the average bio-jukebox, Just in Time doesn’t require Groff to shed his unique charm. Instead, he introduces himself as the performer we know and love, then taps in and out of the Darin character.

Jonathan Groff and the company of Just in Time

Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

“I knew I wanted to start the show as myself and break the fourth wall with the audience to create that connection that Bobby was really famous for—the vibe that we’re all here today, in this present moment, and anything can happen,” Groff says. “I’m trying to evoke this real love affair between performer and audience, and that’s where the conceit of the show came from and continues to live.”

Groff’s longing to evoke the golden age of the Copacabana (Darin’s favorite) came true at Wednesday night’s performance. His best friend Lea Michele was front and center at the cabaret tables on the floor of the intimate theater—renovated to look like a luxe nightclub—before dancing with Groff during his curtain call. Around her were his Merrily costars Daniel Radcliffe, Lindsay Mendez, and Katie Rose Clarke, along with his old Hamilton castmates Lin-Manuel Miranda and Philippa Soo. The after-party, at Guastavino’s on the Upper East Side, was attended by LaChanze, Grey Henson, and Kevin Cahoon, who danced the night away to a live band with Donna Murphy.

Groff with Phillipa Soo and Lin-Manuel Miranda on Wednesday night

Photo: Michaelah Reynolds

But a week before all that, Groff explained his connection with Bobby Darin to Vogue. Below are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Vogue: Was there a particular moment during that YouTube rabbit hole that sold you on your ability to walk into this guy?

Jonathan Groff: There’s a clip of him singing “Once Upon a Time” that I remember watching on that night, and I can’t even say “acting,” because it’s not like he was acting, but it was so deeply felt. He was not singing a song on a TV show; he was communicating something really deep, and watching that come through was really amazing. Then, in the later years, on his TV specials, he would do these duets with women, with Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark, and they would sit on stools and sing with their faces so close to each other. He was so intimate and present. I remember being really pulled in by that.

If you close your eyes and play it, where does this music take you?

It feels magical, honestly. There’s a quote in his son Dodd’s book about Bobby being a nightclub animal and being at the height of his powers performing live, and it is a transcendent experience to perform this music, especially so intimately, in front of a crowd. There’s another clip that I was obsessed with of Bobby and George Burns doing this sand dance together to “I Ain’t Got Nobody.” There’s this bridge between their generation, and it’s really so beautiful. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, when they did that run together for those years—it’s like a modern pop star relating and respecting and being inspired by someone from the previous generation. When we play this music live, the sound of our big jazz band is always transporting to me. It takes me to another place, another era. The vibration of that is so exciting.

There are people in the audience who grew up listening to his music, so you feel the melting of an audience member. Oftentimes when I start singing songs, they get applause. I begin “Beyond the Sea,” and the audience erupts into applause. It’s so cool to be standing there singing that music and feel like you’re channeling something. But then a couple of nights ago, there was an eight-year-old girl in the front row and she’s transported. Why is she transported? She didn’t grow up listening to “Dream Lover.” But I think because Bobby was so obsessed with the audience and being the ultimate entertainer, there is something embedded in this music that makes it so pleasing and enjoyable to be present for, both as a performer and audience member.

What’s the closest you’ve gotten to that classic Barbra at the Bon Soir nightclub experience as an audience member?

That’s an album I am deeply obsessed with. I’m living out my fantasy here, from watching those old clips of Barbra singing on the Judy Garland and Dinah Shore shows with a simple set and a phenomenal song, just telling a story. That’s what Bobby was doing, and he shared that in common with Barbra. For me, it’s a fantasy come true.

Photographed by Norman Jean Roy, Vogue, September 2023.
What have you noticed about the songs Bobby wrote?

They’re really autobiographical. With “Splish Splash,” he was trying anything he could do to get a hit, and this rock-and-roll thing was what was slapping at the time. The legend goes that he was at this famous DJ Murray the K’s house, and Murray’s mom called and said, “I’ve got a song title for Bobby, if he can write it: ‘Splish splash, take a bath,’” and Bobby apparently wrote that novelty song in 15 minutes. He wrote a lot of jingles early on in his career, and he was almost like a savant. He could sit at the piano and just think of songs. He wrote this song “Things,” which is this bouncy, jaunty song about the dissolution of his relationship with Sandra Dee. He wrote “18 Yellow Roses,” which gestures at his future folk era, but he literally sent 18 yellow roses every day to Sandra Dee’s mom to get her on his side before he then transitioned to sending them every day to Sandra. He wrote the song “Rainin’” after he’d had this family secret revealed. [In his 30s, Darin learned that the woman he’d long believed to be his sister was in fact his mother and that his grandmother had actually raised him.] He was always playing with dark, intense themes with rhythmic, upbeat music, like his arrangement for “Mack the Knife.” That juxtaposition makes it feel quite dangerous and special. And then [1967’s Songs From Big Sur] doesn’t even sound like anything he’d previously done. It was like him doing Cowboy Carter—he really, genuinely genre flipped. You really feel a lot of his self-expression and changing relationship to culture in the music that he wrote.

I feel like artists don’t really release covers that much anymore. Do you think we’re missing something from that?

That’s interesting. The first one I think of is Adele’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” but you’re right. What I love about Bobby is that he really wanted to look back and really wanted to be a legend. He wanted to be great. So he was saying, “Let me go swim around in the greatness that came before me,” and the show highlights part of his impulse for doing that. And I do think that’s the Lady Gaga energy of singing standards with Tony Bennett. I’m thinking about the Renaissance tour, when those four women came out and covered the Diana Ross song “Love Hangover,” or how Beyoncé has nodded to Etta James. The greats do study the greats and make it their own, like Barbra Streisand’s Kennedy Center tribute when Beyoncé sings “The Way We Were.” It’s always so moving to me when modern artists do that. Look at Sabrina Carpenter, who was just in that truck with Dolly Parton. There is still that energy in the air, a little bit, for the greats. It’s what we’re hoping to do with Bobby Darin. The impetus wasn’t doing a biomusical that feels like a museum piece. We want it to feel current and present, not like a dusty look back. Gracie Lawrence is playing the role of Connie Francis, and it’s actually a perfect example of the tone of the show. Connie had this iconic voice, and Gracie’s not doing an impression, but she’s honoring her through nods in her performance while bringing her own unique talent that is quite timeless and old school, ultimately. That’s the kind of razor’s edge we’ve been riding in the development of the show.

Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

You’re playing an entertainer with a strong relationship with his audience. Is this the stage role for which you have had to rely most on your own charisma?

I wanted to bring myself to it. Eight years ago, when we talked about it, that was what the project was telling me to do. First of all, Bobby Darin sounds different on every recording. It’s hard to do a Bobby Darin impression because he’s such a chameleon, which opens up this opportunity to get theatrical and a little expressionist with the way you articulate his life story and music. His voice kept telling me that I had to bring myself first and then tell the story of his life, because that’s what he did. He was always negotiating his health because he had a weak heart and was in and out of the hospital and died at 37, so there was this level of presence and here-and-now energy in his performances that’s transcendent. That magic was even more important than whatever style or song he did. Every time he sang “Mack the Knife,” he’d sing it in a different way, but you still know it’s Bobby Darin singing it. That is what I’m trying to do. By tapping into myself, I’m tapping into Bobby Darin and honoring the present moment. Every night, the audience isn’t meant to be extras in a 1959 club show at the Copa. They’re meant to be the audience they are now, at the Circle in the Square Theater in 2025, and we’re all gonna experience Bobby Darin’s life story together.