Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
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music by Tom Kitt & Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyrics by Amanda Green & Lin-Manuel Miranda, libretto by Jeff Whitty, directed by Andy Blankenbuehler
Mirvish Productions, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto
May 3-June 3, 2012
“A brightly colored fluffy ball” – the definition of “pompon” in Webster’s Dictionary
It’s hard to understand what would motivate anyone to write the musical Bring It On or to see it. The story is supposedly “inspired by” the movie of the same name from 2000 whose only claim to fame is having been number one at the box office in North America for two weeks and for having led to four direct-to-DVD sequels. Jeff Whitty, who calls himself the writer of the “libretto”, has junked the plot of the movie and changed the names of all the characters. What’s left is a clichéd tale of two rival cheerleading squads who complete all the way to the national finals. The characters are one-dimensional. The music, mashup of hip-hop with other contemporary dance music styles, is instantly forgettable. And the choreography, which ought to be the show’s big selling point, is energetic and acrobatic but mind-numbingly repetitive. The show is basically the musical equivalent of a pompon.
The musical is geared to people whose time in high school was the highpoint of their lives. It’s even said in the “libretto” that high school goes by so fast we should make it last as long as we can. Repeated failing would be one way to do that, but the speaker means that students should enjoy their time in high school as much as possible. It should come as no surprise that the entire show framed according to a pre-twenties mindset and all the lack of maturity and life-experience that goes with it.
The focus of the entire show is Campbell Davis (Taylor Louderman), a girl whose has had the dream of becoming a cheerleader since the age of five. Now entering her senior year at Truman High, she hopes to achieve her goal of taking her team to the Nationals. Her pals are the self-proclaimed bitch Skylar (Kate Rockwell), her hanger-on Kylar (Janet Krupin) and Bridget (Ryann Redmond) a plus-sized girl resigned to failure who serves as the team mascot. Also returning to the squad is Campbell’s airhead boyfriend Steven (Neil Haskell). The seniors hold auditions for the squad and decide to give Eva (Elle McLemore), a particularly sycophantic sophomore, a chance.
Then, the unthinkable happens. Following a school board redistricting meeting, Campbell and Bridget have to go to a new school. Unlike Truman, Jackson High is primarily non-white and dangerous – and they don’t even have a cheerleading squad! Instead they have a hip-hop dance crew led by Danielle (Adrienne Warren). The best part of the show concerns the various travails of Campbell and Bridget as they struggle to fit in to their new surroundings. In particular, Campbell wants to gain the trust of Danielle so she can join the dance crew, which seems to have a pretty open policy since one of them, La Cienega (Gregory Haney), is a drag queen. Things go well and Jackson turns out to be a much more tolerant place than Truman ever was. Bridget finds the rapper Twig (Nicolas Womack), someone who actually is attracted to her just as she is, and Campbell gains a new admirer in the musician Randall (Jason Gotay).
Up to this point the show has been a bit of meaningless fluff but pleasant and amusing enough that you don’t mind. Then there is a major revelation that is so far-fetched that it destroys whatever goodwill the show has engendered. Eva turns out not to be the innocent young thing she seemed, but in fact an evil mastermind who now speaks in an electronically altered demon voice, and the show moves from merely adolescent to downright cartoonish. Eva engineered everything to take Campbell’s place and lead the Truman squad to glory herself. Now Campbell must have her revenge – and the show that was never very far uphill goes downhill from there.
Act 2 takes forever to sort out this conflict by adding more twists and by padding the action with sappy ballads in a vain attempt to bring out the non-rah-rah emotions that have so far been decidedly absent from the story. Throughout the show Whitty seems to think, rather like Ben Elton in We Will Rock You, that if he satirizes the story and the subject matter we will more readily embrace it. In fact, when the librettist is pointing out that cheerleading is stupid and the story is nonsense at the same time as the songwriters are attempting to get us to feel something for the characters, the two actions cancel each other out.
All that remains is the spectacle, but here director and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler makes the mistake of firing all his guns in the first two dance numbers. Once you’ve seen extensions (where two men, one at each foot, lift the “flyer” overhead), pyramids, various tosses, spins and catches, you’ve seen pretty much all there is. None of the subsequent routines add much of interest so that the final routines for the Truman and Jackson squads are visually messy and don’t seem all that exciting. I’ve seen more precise and elaborate routines on television dance competitions.
All this is a pity since the cast, which features people with real cheerleading and gymnastic experience, is enormously talented. Louderman, a fine all-round singer and dancer, holds the show together by the force of her winning personality, though Whitty gives her very little to work with. Adrienne Warren and Jason Gotay stand out for the strength of their voices. Kate Rockwell has excellent comic timing as the one-note bitch, though she is too old to be a convincing high-schooler. Ryann Redmond is clearly the audience favourite, probably because she is the only character to have a multifaceted personality. In a show generally devoid of real feeling, we happily follow her transition from outcast at Truman to someone who can’t believe she is actually popular at Jackson. Both Elle McLemore and Nicolas Womack stand out more for their acting than their singing. The main fault with both is the indecipherability of their words.
Since it has to be open to allow for all the dance and cheering routines, there is really not set, though David Korins receives credit – just four lighting standards on either side with four flying LED screens to set the various scenes. Jason Lyons has created rock concert-style lighting throughout that is as harsh as it is showy. Andrea Lauer’s costumes consist mostly of cheer uniforms, but she goes rather overboard in clothing the girls of Jackson High. If it’s supposed to be an inner-city school, where do they money for so many outré fashions?
Bring It On has been touring North America since it premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, in January 2011. Its goal is Broadway. There are worse musicals on Broadway (e.g. Rock of Ages), and I can see why the producers would want the Broadway imprimatur. Yet, just as the Bring It On movie sequels went direct-to-DVD, it would seem wiser to license the show now directly to schools and community theatres. We Canadians may view the American obsession with cheerleading as just another sign of the country’s celebration of vacuity. States in the South and Midwest where the activity is taken seriously – remember the Texas cheerleader mom who hired a hitman in 1991 to knock off her daughter’s rival? – are surely the most likely to relate to a subject that to us seems totally inane, especially in a show that does nothing to enhance its reputation.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Taylor Louderman (centre) and the ensemble. ©2012 Joan Marcus.
For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.
2012-05-05
Bring It On