‘Prom’ pokes fun at showbiz vanity
Musical mixes sharp zingers, undercooked lesbian love story
Sometimes, a show’s chief virtue is to know itself for exactly what it is. Such praise might sound faint, but not every piece of theater needs to claw its way to emotional peaks and troughs or turn the tides of national politics or blast your consciousness wide open. Self-knowledge, which is really a kind of honesty, can feel all too rare on American theater’s most moneyed stages.
So when “The Prom” winks and nudges its way to its opening number at BroadwaySF’s Golden Gate Theatre, you might feel refreshed. The show levels with its audience as a sign of respect. It has a moral to its story, but it knows the real point here is to revel in the worst stereotypes of Broadway actors and let them behave badly.
In the musical, which opened Wednesday, June 22, Dee Dee (Courtney Balan), Barry (Patrick Wetzel), Angie (Emily Borromeo) and Trent (Bud Weber) are looking to recover their past theater glory after a New York Times review calls a couple of them narcissists. Time to find a contained, “high-profile, low-risk” charitable cause, they say. Bingo: an Indiana lesbian high schooler named Emma (Kaden Kearney) who wants only to take another girl, Alyssa (Kalyn West), to prom, against the PTA’s wishes.
This love-is-love premise positioned the show as a fun kickoff to the city’s Pride weekend, and BroadwaySF’s opening night contributed to the festivities with a curtainraiser lip sync by the Bay Area’s own Lady Camden, runner-up on season 14 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” (She was introduced by Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who called himself “a last-minute understudy” for Mayor London Breed, who has tested positive for the coronavirus.)
Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin’s book elbows its way through its setup with de
lightful dispatch, not caring about the details and knowing that we don’t either. Instead we get a parade of zingers: the way the quartet hush when talking about nonunion actors, as if to shield themselves from that professional shame; lines like, “We’re gonna help that little lesbian whether she likes it or not”; an overweening assurance that there’s no problem on Earth that can’t be solved with a Broadway belt, some shoehorned rhymes and sequins, and a little slapdash choreography.
Converting hearts and minds in the fictional town of Edgewater isn’t quite that simple, but it’s not that far off, either. “The Prom” assumes only a homophobia whose meanness never threatens physical violence and that’s ready to acknowledge its own hypocrisy the first time it’s pointed out. It’s also a homophobia uncomplicated by other prejudices — racism evidently doesn’t exist in this racially diverse town.
This cooked-up-in-a-lab, one-variable experiment doesn’t nettle, though, until the show earnestly tries to tackle homophobia, switching the butts of jokes from the Broadway interlopers to the townies. Now the fruit hangs too low, and the show, out of its comfort zone, swings sloppily and lazily.
If the cast’s singing voices too often undershoot, sputter or curdle, the four adult leads, under the direction of Casey Nicholaw, nonetheless swashbuckle and sashay as if every moment of their lives is in the spotlight. Chewing the scenery for them is a life philosophy, a modus operandi — what resting bitch face might be for someone else.
In that arena, “The Prom” achieves some moments of real profundity. When Emma is hiding out in her humble bedroom, with her Christmas lights and “Lady Bird” poster, the entry of four Broadway actors, who want only to hang out and solve her problems with her, vicariously fulfills the fantasy of every adolescent misfit who has ever dreamed her heroes might magically fly in and save the day — or at least keep her company.
And if the show’s lesbian love story and coming-out narratives feel undercooked, their conclusions foregone, another promposal moment packs an unexpected emotional punch: when Emma asks Barry — who’s also gay and who didn’t get to have his prom decades ago — to be her date.
In American culture, we don’t have many rituals that tell us that we matter, that we’re worthy, that we deserve to be loved and to be a part of our communities, especially after youth’s rites of passage. In this show, there’s something about being asked to prom that trumps all the Tony and Drama Desk awards Dee Dee and Barry lug around, lest a moment might call for their display. It’s not just a cheesy life lesson. It’s an invitation for us all to find ways, overt and subtle, at any stage of life, to ask each other to prom.