Review: THE PROM at Arizona Broadway Theatre

Guest contributor David Appleford’s review of Arizona Broadway theatre’s production of THE PROM:

The 2018 Broadway musical THE PROM transforms what sounds like a groan-inducing premise into a sneakily moving musical; four self-absorbed Broadway actors descend on a small Indiana town to save a lesbian teenager and discover that becoming a decent human being requires more than finding the right cause on social media. 

Now shimmying and belting its heart out at Arizona Broadway Theatre in Peoria until September 13, writers Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin approach their musical as if BYE BYE BIRDIE was suddenly saddled with a social conscience.  It’s a valentine to golden-age musicals, but this time the themes and the jokes have teeth.

After their Eleanor Roosevelt musical is murdered by NYC critics, its stars receive an even greater indignity: they are informed that audiences simply don’t like them. Their solution is wonderfully logical. If Broadway won’t adore them as performers, America can admire them as activists. They need a cause to polish their reputations: Instagrammable, headline-grabbing and, above all, requiring a minimum of actual effort. 

After ruling out poverty (“too broad”), world hunger (“too much heavy lifting”), and charity work involving manual labor (“With my back?” asks Andy Myers’s delightfully queeny Barry), our quartet stumbles upon a trending online outrage: a teenage girl in small-town Indiana is banned from bringing her girlfriend to the prom.  For the foursome, it's the social issue equivalent of a Tony-worthy quick-change: instant relevance, and more importantly, zero effort.

Cassandra Norville Klaphake’s Dee Dee is a Broadway Medusa with an ego-drunk performance that finds a surprising center of warmth. You believe she’s the kind of woman who really would travel with her Tony award in her carry-on, just in case someone needed to be impressed. Among her many quips, her best line is a toss-off gem regarding the critic’s relentless attacks on her narcissism: “I still don’t understand what’s wrong with that.”

Opposite her is Andy Myers’s Barry, whose flamboyance is practically airborne. He says he’s “as gay as a bucket of wigs,” and then proceeds to prove it throughout the rest of the show.

The first-class ensemble of narcissists is rounded out with Angie (choreographer Lynzee Foreman doing double-duty), a Fosse-fied chorus girl still kicking high, and Jamie Parnell’s Trent, a Juilliard blowhard so clueless it would surprise no one if he thought his Godspell tour was missionary work.  Raymond Barcelo as their harried press agent looks like he may well have aged ten years trying to book these lunatics on any late-night talk show that would have them.

Sedona Valdez plays Mrs. Greene, the bigoted PTA queen, and she does it with all the nuance of a storybook villain, and that’s not a knock. The role has no use for subtle shades of gray, and Valdez gives it the broad, almost operatic edge it needs, while Miguel Jackson as the sympathetic principal gets a moonlit ballad at Applebee’s.  He’s the emotional ballast of the piece, compassionate, grounded, and clearly the only adult in the room. When he sheepishly admits to Dee Dee that “Straight people like Broadway, too,” her deadpan reply of “I’ve heard that, but I always thought it was a fairy tale,” is perfect.

But the show’s unexpected soul is Dani Cleveland’s Emma, the lesbian kid caught in the media maelstrom she never asked for. Cleveland plays her with the kind of aching awkwardness that doesn’t beg for sympathy, yet you’ll hand it to her, all the same.  Her scenes with Giselle Sanchez Wilson’s closeted Alyssa are delicate and real, like pages out of a diary no one was supposed to read.

Even better is Emma’s developing friendship with Barry, the flamboyant actor who once lacked the courage to attend his own prom. Suddenly the character who has spent the evening behaving as though every room desperately needs more of him recognizes the frightened teenager he used to be. The musical stops laughing at Broadway excess long enough to understand what lies beneath some of it: theatre has historically offered sanctuary to people who discovered that performing could provide the freedom ordinary life withheld.

Director Ken Urso pulls off the show's difficult balancing act, blending satire and sincerity through Lynzee Foreman’s razzle-dazzle choreography and a genuine affection for musicals and the messy people who inhabit them. You get spoofs of Broadway tropes and sincere tributes to them in a score that is first-class, with voices here brought to life by music director Mark 4man.

Scenic designer Pete Bish’s set pieces glide in and out like seasoned dancers in a Fosse number, while Nathaniel White’s chameleon-like lighting shifts effortlessly around them. There’s a rhythm to this production that feels practically choreographed. Director Urso clearly understands the importance of pace. The show moves like a cast member late to half-hour call.

However, what may surprise is the real-life story behind the show. Before it was a tap-dancing, Broadway fantasia, THE PROM was something all-too real and much starker.  It was a legal battle fought by a teenage girl in Fulton, Mississippi who just wanted to slow-dance with her girlfriend without it being treated like a scandal.  In 2010, Constance McMillen, a high-school senior, dared to wear a tux and bring a date in a dress, an act so radical, apparently, that her school board opted to cancel prom altogether rather than let the decorum of heterosexual awkwardness be disrupted.

But THE PROM isn’t about Mississippi in 2010, or even Indiana today. It’s about Broadway trying to save the day in a show for people who cry when the underdog wins and for those who get every obscure reference in FORBIDDEN BROADWAY.

Arizona Broadway Theatre's production is funny and touching with a final-act kiss that earns its cheers the old-fashioned way: through sheer, exuberant buildup. THE PROM reminds us why we keep showing up for musical theatre. Not for the message, and not even for the spectacle, but for that fleeting moment when even if the world outside refuses to give you the ending you want, inside, the lights change, the orchestra swells, somebody reaches out a hand, and for a few glorious hours the world becomes the place you want it to be.

THE PROM runs through September 13th at Arizona Broadway Theatre -- https://azbroadway.org/ -- 7701 W. Paradise Lane, Peoria, AZ -- 623-776-8400

Graphic credit to ABT

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