Bring It On!
At one point during this energetic. fun and empty musical, I leaned over to my date and said, “Oh, did we just miss a plot point!?” There was no reply as one couldn’t be sure it was such.
There was definitely a generational gap in the audience for this piece. Opening night, the Ahmanson Theatre had packed the place with teens and twenties. And they loved it. Screamed and hollered and applauded like mad – every ten minutes. We older critics and others were much more subdued in our reactions to this frenetic, noisy and silly romp.
Based on a film few of us ever saw, “Bring It On,” the libretto/script is by Jeff Whitty, with Music by Tom Kitt & Lin-Manuel Miranda, with lyrics by Amanda Green & Miranda. The split in the compositional duties certainly seems to be when the action splits between the “white” school and the “communities of color” school: different styles and rhythms. All of it fun, by the way, with some good lyric-writing that stands out.
The plot, such as it is, concerns the WASP kids at an upscale high school taking their cheerleading chores very seriously. So we see the various stereotypes cleanly acted out: the captain of the squad (Taylor Louderman); the bitchy sub-altern with the body-of-death and the mouth of a prison guard (Janet Krupin); the lowly barely-tolerated one who is nastier than we are initially led to believe (Elle McLemore); the horizontally-challenged girl who remains relegated to being the Parrot mascot (Ryann Redmond); the boyfriend of the leader (Jason Gotay).
When the Captain is re-districted to a poorer school, she has to overcome the obstacle of not only being the “new girl in town,” but also overcome the prejudices of those who see her blondness as another example of “colonial interference.” The sensitivities are well-handled and there are no egregious slips of racism, sexism or homophobia (one of the black “girls” is a well-muscled young man, Gregory Haney in full control of her fierceness).
So, this Young Adult story has some resonance for those under 30; for the rest of us, it was something of a chore, due to a lack of originality in the story and the stakes being rather low in the long scheme of things.
What is a standout is the choreography of director Andy Blankenbuehler, all (and too much) energetic calisthenics, repeated ad-nauseum. By watching one small young thing tossed twenty feet into the air, doing perfect turns and caught expertly, over and over again, along with backflips that excite and at the same time make one worry about the long-range effect on the body (it’s something we elders do rather well, worry…), the effect is dulled.
The story got more interesting when it moved to the lower-income school and how they turn the small-time “krew” into a competitive “squad,” merging the skills Black and Latino kids do well there with the disciplined effects that our heroine, Campbell (Louderman) brings to the process. Which sounds a whole lot more credible than it really was. Nevertheless, the merging of the two styles was fun.
Who is jealous of whom; who is smarter than another; who ends up with trophies and love isn’t terribly compelling, but the journey, the sets and costumes, etc, are fun. How you enjoy the evening will fully depend on how much you remember about your own (distant?) high school years and whether or not it’s worth remembering.
At the Ahmanson Theatre, Temple Street @ Grand, downtown Los Angeles. Through December 10th, 2011. 213.972.4400 or www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.