‘The Simon & Garfunkel Story’ soars with nostalgic harmonies, despite its aimless narrative frame

The Simon & Garfunkel Story

Show direction and music supervision by Dean Elliott. Until April 23 at the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St. mirvish.com or 1-800-461-3333

To label Simon & Garfunkel’s music as merely the songbook of a generation would be a minor insult. Sure, the folk-rock duo’s heyday came amid the counterculture revolution of the late ’60s and early ’70s, but their legacy lives on.

More than half a century since the release of their chart-topping, record-breaking album “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the pair’s songs are still embedded in the public consciousness, inspiring countless covers and a new generation of artists. (Over the past decade alone, groups including Disturbed and the Vamps have reintroduced Simon & Garfunkel’s boomer hits to today’s cohort of millennials and Gen-Zs.)

But the triumph of the duo’s legacy can’t be more aptly exemplified than through the performances of Jonah Bobo and Brendan Jacob Smith, starring in “The Simon & Garfunkel Story,” the nostalgic and somewhat laborious quasi-tribute to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, now playing at Mirvish’s CAA Theatre through April 23.

Bobo and Smith channel Simon and Garfunkel, respectively, with brilliance. (They share the roles with Taylor Bloom and Max Pinson throughout this two-week run.)

The only quality that rivals each of their warmly mellow voices is the sonorous harmonies when they sing together. Those harmonies are a gateway to memory lane. Close your eyes and you could be listening to the original duo live, navigating their vast catalogue of hits including “Cecilia,” “Mrs. Robinson” and “The Sound of Silence” as well as lesser-known works.

Visually, too, the pair are astonishingly similar to the two men they play: Smith, like Garfunkel, with a voluminous head of hair and hands tucked into his pockets while he sings, and Bobo, strumming away at his guitar with verve just like Simon. It never comes off as a cheap imitation but rather as a tribute filled with deep admiration, as they chart the Grammy Award-winning duo’s trajectory from high school best friends to musical partners whose bonds were battered by the demands of touring.

Bobo and Smith’s musical chemistry is strong, as is their reverence for Simon & Garfunkel. In yet another parallel with the folk-rock duo’s life story, the pair of performers in this show also met as young students, coming of age by, of all things, singing Simon & Garfunkel’s song in their high school’s stairwell.

Backing them up are four band members: Marc Encabo on keyboard; Billy Harrington on drums; Collin Keller on guitar; and Jay Hemphill on bass guitar. They look as if they’re having the time of their lives and shine during solo moments in the spotlight.

If the purpose of “The Simon & Garfunkel Story” was to present the group’s songs in a tribute concert format, the product onstage at the CAA Theatre would be solid, the performers paired with the dynamic, concert-style lighting by Ruby Leigh, Jason Giaffo and Mike Berger Design. But it doesn’t quite live up to the last word of the show’s title.

There’s not much of a story to “The Simon & Garfunkel Story.” It’s telling that there’s no writer or dramaturge listed in the program. (Instead, show director and musical director Dean Elliott receives top billing.)

In between the songs, Bobo and Smith blandly walk the audience through the duo’s career chronologically. The show begins and ends with a series of video projections at the back of the stage rattling off Simon & Garfunkel’s achievements.

For fans of the singers, this is nothing new. For others, the musical history lesson likely isn’t compelling enough to prompt much further interest in their fractious career.

The show also can’t seem to figure out how to integrate Simon & Garfunkel’s vast catalogue of songs. It’s most successful when the creators mine the songs and lyrics for deeper meaning and use them to comment on the singers’ relationship with each other. “Homeward Bound,” for example, works perfectly to convey the struggles of life on tour.

Most of the time, however, the songs are inserted chronologically, doing little to serve the weak narrative frame. They’re accompanied by video projections by Z Frame that, though elegant, swing from being rather brusquely literal interpretations of Simon & Garfunkel’s lyrics to indecipherably metaphorical.

But none of that seemed to matter to the appreciative, sold-out crowd Wednesday evening. And it really doesn’t matter when Bobo and Smith break into song, whisking us back on a wave of nostalgia and cementing Simon & Garfunkel’s enduring popularity.

SHARE: