In 2010 a gay Mississippi high school student was banned from going to her senior prom by the school’s board of education because she wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date. She challenged the ruling, which resulted in the cancellation of the prom. The student and the ACLU sued the district. The federal court found the school district guilty of violating the student’s First Amendment rights and said the prom must be held.
The board reinstated the prom, but local parents organized an alternative event to be held on the same night. They kept the event and its location a secret so the gay student and the media would not know. That event was the impetuous for Jack Viertel’s concept musical The Prom, which is now on stage at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre.
The stage version builds on the real story and expands it to center on four frustrated Broadway actors, at a failure crossroad in their careers, who contrive a way to get attention by traveling to the very conservative town of Edgewater, Indiana, to help Emma, a lesbian student banned from bringing her girlfriend to the high school prom.
The Broadway production was critically greeted with such comments as “such a joyful hoot,” “with its kinetic dancing, broad mugging and belting anthems, it makes you believe in musical comedy again,” and “with a tuneful score, a playful book, and performances that remind you what Broadway heart and chutzpah are all about.”
The story, though possessing the quality of a TV sitcom tale, has a meaningful purpose, is tightly written and keeps attention throughout.
It is the purpose of community and little theaters, such as Clague Playhouse, Greenbrier Theatre, Brecksville Little Theater and Chagrin Valley Little Theatre, which has been producing shows for 94 seasons, to give local audiences exposure to theater and give non-professional actors and community members a chance to create and perform. Audiences should not attend expecting the shows to be “better than Broadway.” That’s the purpose of the Broadway touring shows and the local professional theaters.
The Prom is a perfect community theater show. It has a message, a well-written script, good music (especially “Dance With You” and “Jazz”), can be done with less than professional actors, has a fairly easy set to build, and lots of parts for performers of all ages and talents.
The show’s song, “We Look to You,” banners the good that theater does for performers with its declaration, “We need a place to run when everything goes wrong, when the answer to each problem is to burst into a song, and standard rules of logic just don’t simply apply, when people dance in unison and no one wonders why.”
The same song tells why people come to the theater, stating, “We look to you in good times and bad — the worlds you create make the real ones seem less sad. The curtain goes up, and every now and then, it feels as if we’re coming home again.”
The CVLT show has some good performances including that by Brooke Hamilton who has a nice singing voice and good acting chops as the lesbian Emma who is thrust on the national scene as a role model when all she wants to do is dance at the prom with her girlfriend Alyssa, who is well acted and sung by Maela Mazzone.
Jessie Pollak (Kaylee) and Kelly Scott (Shelby) were appropriately nasty as the mean girls, as was Eric Oswald as Principal Hawkins, who did a great rendition of “We Look to You.”
Nina Takacs (Dee Dee Allen) and Dan Knepper (Barry Glickman) belted out “It’s Not About Me,” and overacted to the delight of the audience who roared at the exaggerations, while accepting the predictable and often awkwardly presented choreography.
David W. Coxe’s orchestra was excellent, as were the electronic media insertions.
CAPSULE JUDGMENT: The Prom is an old-fashioned musical which tells a contemporary tale with a moral and gets a good community theater staging at CVLT, It is worth seeing.
The Prom continues on the Chagrin Valley Little Theater stage through August 10. For tickets, call 440-247-8955 or go to CVLT.org
[Written by Roy Berko, member: Cleveland Critics Circle and American Theatre Critics Association]