Review: With special effects buzzing, ‘Back to the Future’ bends time at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre

If you really can go back in time, things might get pretty cringe. Just ask Marty McFly (Caden Brauch).

Time traveling to 1955 in “Back to the Future: The Musical,” he meets his mom, Lorraine Baines (Zan Berube), as a high schooler who’s modern and horny. And, urp, she has the hots for him.

Of course, Marty knows more about her than she does about him in this flashback, so he keeps his focus on his only mission: ensuring that Lorraine and George McFly (Burke Swanson), his father, get together.

Director John Rando’s raucous production of “Future,” which opened Tuesday at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theatre, captures the comic spirit of the 1985 film with Brauch energetically inhabiting the Michael J. Fox role. The actor is tightly wound but releases his pressured coils for comic effect.

Adapted by Bob Gale from the screenplay he did with Robert Zemeckis and with songs by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard, this “Future” takes the beloved story in an entirely new medium but is not always successful musically.

Specifically, the big introductory number, “It’s Only a Matter of Time,” in which Marty talks about his rock and roll dreams, mostly sounds like a bunch of noise.

But “Future” finds its footing after that inauspicious beginning, dwelling in the tumult of high school and assumes that adulthood is just a long playing out of the dramas and fripperies of that growth period. This is best manifested in the roles of meathead bully Biff (Ethan Rogers) and George, a wimpy, meek dweeb. As George, Swanson finds some funny, antic physicality that recalls Jim Carrey.

The show is a time capsule of ‘80s and ‘50s fashions, nodding to touchstones, including MTV and Lycra leotards on the one hand and asbestos and plutonium on the other.

And while Marty has an introspective number, “Got No Future,” that Brauch injects with heart and hope, the truth of the matter is that the best songs in the show belong to others. “Gotta Start Somewhere,” the production’s closest thing to a showstopper, is performed with irrepressible sunshine by Cartreze Tucker, who plays Goldie Wilson and Marvin Berry.

Doc Brown (Don Stephenson), the experimental scientist who transports Marty back to 1985, is a benign dreamer, even if he’s illegally playing with plutonium. Stephenson delivers “For the Dreamers,” Doc’s paean to resilience in the face of failure, with spirit and suppleness.

Stephenson also stands out on “It Works,” a simple declarative number that also sums up the disparate elements of production. They come together seamlessly in the name of futuristic, throwback fun.

But the music sometimes plays second fiddle to the buzzy, transporting special effects, including computational gurgle, scenic projections and thunder that makes it seem like we’re zooming at the speed of light, or at least 88 mph, the place at which the DeLorean breaches the space-time continuum.

One of the coolest projection effects was when Doc climbs the stairs to the clock tower. Stephenson even gets out of breath after making such an effort.

These complicated whiz-bang elements are executed smoothly in “Future.” The pièce de résistance of those effects comes at the end and centers on the DeLorean that transports Marty back and forth between 1985 and 1955.

As the car zooms one last time, it leaves an impression, taking our dreams spinning and streaking through the stars.

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 1 & 6:30 p.m. Sun. Ends Sept. 22.

Tickets: $50-$149. Hennepinarts.org.