Broadway babies save the day, and deliver some social justice
If you liked the film versions of “Mamma Mia!” or “Les Miserables,” then you’ll probably like “The Prom,” premiering Dec. 11 on Netflix. Overextertion rarely gets in the way of a hit musical on screen.
Clearly this means I didn’t like “The Prom.” Right?
Half-right. And half-wrong. It’s not that the first half of “The Prom,” shrill comic overstatement delivered by savvy professionals working a little too close to the camera, doesn’t work, and the second, more relaxed and heartfelt half does. It’s that the two halves aren’t all that compatible. And yet, even so, I was glad to see the small-town Indiana teenaged lesbian get to the prom with her date. The material, wildly uneven in quality, went to work on my inner sap, even as my outer sap kept inching the chair further from the screen.
Also, Meryl Streep’s f-u-n fun.
On stage “The Prom” premiered on Broadway in 2018. Shut out at the Tony Awards, it closed after a solid but unprofitable run. Before it closed Ryan Murphy, of “Glee,” “Feud,” “Ratched” and “American Horror Story,” saw it, loved it and bookmarked it for his schedule.
“The Prom” fabulizes a reallife 2010 prom cancellation incident in Itawamba County, Mississippi, involving a lesbian teen, her intended prom date and the subsequent controversy. The musical starts in the mysterious east, in midtown Manhattan’s theater district. We’re in the aftermath of the opening and fast Broadway closing of a hapless new Eleanor Roosevelt tuner, “Eleanor!” (Musical theater obsessives may know of a real, nonfictional Eleanor musical, produced all over the place.)
Down in the dumps at Sardi’s, “Eleanor!” headliner Dee
Dee Allen, played by Streep, and her equally narcissistic co-star Barry Glickman (James Corden) consider their options. What to do? Become celebrity activists! We need “some nice little injustice we can drive to,” Streep says, dryly.
Their cause pops up in a trending social media report of a cancelled small-town Indiana high school prom. The local PTA (Kerry Washington plays the antagonist) shuts it down, in order to prevent a same-sex couple from sullying the morals of the town’s citizens.
“The Prom” brings Dee
Dee and Barry to the dreaded heartland, along with perpetual chorine Angie (Nicole Kidman); Juilliard-trained actor-turned-bartender Trent (Andrew Rannells of “The Book of Mormon”); and publicist Sheldon (Kevin Chamberlain). Mission: to rally behind the ostracized teen Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman) and change the hearts, minds and wardrobe of everybody else.
As has the much better “Hairspray,” “The Prom” is likely to become a high school musical staple, now that more and more of America has figured a few things out. The script comes from Bob Martin and Matthew Sklar, adapting the stage musical’s book by Martin and Chad Beguelin. The songs by Sklar (lyrics) and Beguelin (music) have largely been retained for the screen version.
Streep’s no snob when it comes to dining out on a dangerously familiar archetype. She alone manages to convincingly bridge the “aging drag queen” (Barry’s description) aspect of Dee Dee with the quasi-human version emerging later. Kidman may sing the actual song titled “Zazz.” But the zazz in “The Prom” lies elsewhere, with Streep most of all.
MPAArating: PG-13 (for thematic elements, some suggestive/sexual references and language)
Running time: 2:11 Premieres: Dec. 11 on Netflix. Also in some theaters, where allowed per COVID-19 pandemic regulations.