http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/arts/music/breaking-character-jeremy-jordans-club-act-at-54-below.html 2014-10-28 23:20:20 ‘Breaking Character,’ Jeremy Jordan’s Club Act at 54 Below In “Breaking Character,” his nightclub act at 54 Below, the Broadway actor Jeremy Jordan shows a range that surpasses teen-idol appeal. === “ This grinning, button-cute star of the musicals But as he revealed late in the show while singing “Santa Fe,” a signature ballad of his character Jack Kelly from “Newsies,” there is potentially more to him than a superficial teen-idol appeal. Given a character to inhabit, he became a streetwise newsboy in 1899 New York looking forward to leaving the city and returning to his hometown. It was a stirring performance in which he put on a New York accent and unfurled the full force of his bright, hefty Broadway tenor. Much of the show inhabited the treacherous territory where musical theater, karaoke and television collide, often to the detriment of musical theater as the competitive imperatives of talent contests like “American Idol” outweigh dramatic coherence. This is where the cheese factor came in. He was joined by his wife, Ashley Spencer, to whom he expressed extravagant devotion, for two medleys, one from the flop TV series “Smash,” the other from the jukebox musical “Rock of Ages.” Mr. Jordan also unveiled a nascent talent as a songwriter with a comic sensibility in “Chipotle,” his parody of a song from “Avenue Q.” He sang one number from “The Last Five Years,” a forthcoming film adapted from the Jason Robert Brown musical and co-starring Anna Kendrick. It will be a crucial test of his staying power.