‘SNL’ star Cecily Strong knows funny. Apple’s new musical shows off her other talents

In “Schmigadoon!,” a musical comedy about musical theater starting a six-episode run Friday on Apple TV+, Cecily Strong and Keegan Michael-Key play Melissa and Josh, whose sputtering relationship has brought them out to the woods, backpacking on a “sacred love trail” where they are supposed to find one another again. But when they try to leave, and find the road out of town always leads back to town, Martin Short appears for about 20 seconds, dressed as a Leprechaun, to explicitly state the series’ premise: True love is the only thing that will get them back across the bridge, and “until ye finds it ye must stay/Where life’s a musical every day.” Josh is unhappy; Melissa is interested. Citizens distracting or resisting or assisting them include Betsy, a waitress in low-cut gingham, apparently even younger than she looks ; Mayor Menlove, whose name contains a clue to his character; carnival roustabout Danny, a chip off of “Carousel,” channeling John Raitt; schoolmarm Emma, echoing librarian Marion from “The Music Man”; the Countess, a parody of the Baronness from “The Sound of Music”; and Mildred, more or less the villain of the piece, a voice of conservatism and control who doesn’t like the visitors “or their new-fangled city ideas.” Her big number is a pastiche of “Trouble”: “We got tribulation/Right here in Schmigadoon. … We’ve got strife and tribulation/and not to mention miscegenation.” That the series has been built especially for theater nerds is evident from the title onward, which is funny only if you know there is a musical called “Brigadoon,” by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe — as in Brigadoon, Schmigadoon — and meaningful only if you’re familiar with its central plot device, in which a centuries-old town magically appears in the Scottish highlands once a century. As the partner who feels things, and goes with the flow, Strong gets the better of the script, and she can sing and dance and turn a cartwheel; the series is perhaps best seen as a showcase for her, and she is especially good with Tveit on a Fosse-esque number — basically “Steam Heat,” from “The Pajama Game.” As Florence, the mayor’s wife, Harada gets a lot out of a small part; her solo number, sincerely performed despite its joke refrain — “He’s a queer one, that man o’ mine” — is quite moving, emotionally complex and rooted in genuine yearning and compassion: “I wish that I could free him/so I could truly see him.” DeBose is similarly grounded, in a part free from silliness, and her dance with her classroom is delightful in its exuberance.