Stage Door: "The Prom" is a delight

by Dancin' Dan

The Prom caused a big splash at the Thanksgiving Day Parade last year, giving us the first same-sex kiss ever aired as part of the parade broadcast. The uproar that followed almost single-handedly justified the musical's existence, proving that maybe the world does "really need" a musical about a bunch of past-their-prime Broadway stars who travel to Indiana to help a young gay teen who isn't being allowed to bring her girlfriend to prom. If that plotline makes The Prom sound insufferable, a hopelessly pandering piece of liberal agitprop designed to make the Broadway audience feel oh so very good about themselves for having the same morals as the show's creators, well... that's not exactly the case. The Prom has more up its sleeve than that, and it all comes down to the show's tone.

It's clear from The Prom's first scene that the musical's main target is not the people of Edgewater, Indiana, but rather the vainglorious Broadway stars who insert themselves where they don't belong...

After blowhardily speaking to the press about how they feel their performances in the new musical Eleanor! The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (complete with hip-hop number) are changing lives, classic narcissists Dee Dee Allen (Beath Leaval)  and Barry Glickman (Brooks Ashmanskas) find the show closing on opening night after one withering review from The New York Times. After the review calls them out specifically for being unlikeable, they decide they have to wrangle up some good PR for themselves. But without sacrificing an ounce of their hard-earned self-love. With the help of their good friends Angie (Angie Schworer) a member of the chorus of Chicago for twenty years who was once again turned down for the lead role of Roxie Hart, and Trent (Christopher Sieber), a one-time sitcom star who won't let anyone forget he graduated from Juilliard, they look for a cause for which they can become celebrity activists. They finally find, in Barry's words, "a safe, non-violent, high-profile, low-risk injustice," on Twitter: a young girl named Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen) who is not allowed to bring her girlfriend to her high school prom.

Bringing along their publicist Sheldon Saperstein (Josh Lamon), the four stars hitch a ride with a bus-and-truck production of Godspell, and storm the gates of a PTA meeting at Emma's high school. Tony winner Beth Leavel can take the simplest line and wring humor from it, so when her diva character Dee Dee gets an entire song called "It's Not About Me" with lines like "I understand furious townfolk, I did Beauty and The Beast!" and "I'm no stranger to slander, so my dear you're not alone/The Post once said I was too old to play Eva Peron," it's more than enough to leave you in stitches. And nearly everything involving the Broadway people in the first act is hilarious, a spot-on satirization of both Broadway divas and celebrity activists who insert themselves into situations where they are neither needed nor wanted... and in some cases, not even recognized.

But this really isn't about them, not entirely. It's more about Emma, her girlfriend Alyssa (Isabelle McCalla), and the rest of the denizens of Edgewater, Indiana. And if the show sacrifices a whole lot of nuance in its treatment of the process by which Emma's fellow teens come to ultimately accept her (in true musical comedy fashion, over the course of a single song about how The Bible tells us to "Love Thy Neighbor"), it goes all-in on what it feels like to be an outsider who just wants to feel normal. Caitlin Kinnunen is naturally appealing as Emma, and her first song, "Just Breathe", is a lovely, lightly melancholic little number that presents her as someone who only wants to live her life without any trouble. So when people from Broadway cause even more of an uproar and light a fire under the PTA President Mrs. Greene (who just so happens to be the mother of Emma's very much closeted girlfriend), she's mortified. And she's even more mortified after the actors perform a hilariously terrible song at a monster truck rally trying to teach the "local yokels" about acceptance (sample line: "Bigotry's not big of me, and it's not big of you").

The show's book, by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, balances the wild comedy and sweet romance rather well on the whole. It will often use the comedy of the Broadway folk to set the audience up to be blindsinded by a surprisingly sweet, insightful moment with Emma and Alyssa, or with the school's principal (who turns out to be a big fan of Dee Dee's, and straight to boot). The cast navigates those shifts remarkably well. Brooks Ashmanskas has never been better than as Barry Glickman, somehow being an actual prancing gay queen sterotype but keeping the performance grounded enough so that it never tilts over into offensive caricature. Angie Schworer puts her "crazy antelope legs" to fantastic use in the spot-on Fosse pastiche number "Zazz". But the standout in the cast is Isabelle McCalla as Alyssa. Her perfectly modulated performance culminates in a heartbreaking solo number in which she details how she doesn't feel like she's living life as herself, no matter what she does. The role of Alyssa's mom, the closest thing the show has to a true villain, is unfortunately underwritten, but Courtenay Collins does a fine job of layering in feeling that is not present in the script.

Casey Nicholaw may have given the ensemble a bit too much of his trademark energetic choreography (all the students attend prom in flats), but his direction is the best it's been in years. His staging of the act one finale is a devastating highlight, as is the way he transforms the show's best song, "Unruly Heart," from a simple love song into a big tearjerker. The Prom may not be a new classic (although community theaters will be staging it a LOT once the rights become available), but it always finds just the right balance of humor and heart (and no small amount of zazz). It's an old-fashioned musical comedy the likes of which we don't see all that often nowadays. Perhaps the old-fashioned musical comedy format isn't the best way to tackle the subject of small-town homophobia, but with a bunch of winning performances, a barrel full of hilarious one-liners, some lovely songs, and a finale that will make you stand up and cheer, The Prom is still as enjoyable a new musical as we've gotten in many years on Broadway.

Tony Awards?
Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book are all in play, as are Leading Actress (Beth Leavel probably has a leg up on Caitlin Kinnunen), Leading Actor (Brooks Ashmanskas), Featured Actor (Christopher Sieber), Featured Actress (Isabelle McCalla and Angie Schworer), and Choreography and Director for Casey Nicholaw.