Book and Lyrics: Bill Augustin
Music: Andrew Abrams
Director: Tania Azaveda
The practice of conversion therapy – the idea that any non-heteronormative, non-gender confirming person can be adjusted back into “normalcy” – is an abhorrent one. Serious films such as The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Boy Erased have highlighted the damage such programmes can do. But in 1999, before knowledge of therapy camps was mainstream, the practice was given the comedy treatment in the film But I’m a Cheerleader.
The musical adaptation of the film first surfaced in 2005’s New York Musical Theatre Festival, and returns to the Turbine Theatre after a run earlier this year. And even at first glance, it’s not difficult to see why it might be popular enough to deserve its returning slot. Director Tania Azaveda instills a tight sense of pace, ensuring Andrew Abrams’ joy script never flags.
True, the opening strains of the musical’s first number, Seventeen is Swell, don’t promise much. It has all the trappings of the generic peppy, preppy musical theatre style which seems all too common from modern composers attempting to construct mainstream shows. So initially at least, one should settle in for a comedic evening with so-so songs.
The story as a whole revolves around cheerleader Megan, who is carted off to the True Directions therapy camp after an intervention by her family and friends. They are reacting not to Megan’s sexuality – she identifies as straight, dating football lunkhead Jared (Michael Mather) – but to small things like her love of female guitar-playing singer-songwriters.
At the True Directions camp, the variety of teenagers Megan encounters include Graham (Megan Hill), who awakens in Megan the feelings that previously only manifested in her stereotypical interests.
It is at the camp that the musical kicks into its highest gear. The ensemble of teens assembled there – and who quite correctly show no sign of ever being truly “converted” – provide a fun coterie of gay and lesbian characters who for the most part manage to rise above the camp cliché the script burdens them with. Most successful among these are Mather in a double role as Rock, the son of the camp principal who has supposedly come through her conversion process, and Ash Weir as Kimberly and Hilary, another actor in a dual role who successfully executes the task of breaking the fourth wall and winking to the audience about the artifice of musical theatre.
And while the camp, satirical humour continues to dominate, the serious aspect of what is occurring does strike through with the ballad Wrestling. Patrick Munday gives a heart-wrenching performance as a young man struggling with his own sexuality who has the extra burden of being forced into being someone he is not.
The show’s other truly great number is the ensemble piece Raise Your Flag, an anthem of LGBTQI+ inclusivity led by three drag queens including Noel Sullivan, who also plays counsellor Mike. The musical arrangement means that some of the song’s lyrics are not as audible as one would hope, but the celebratory nature really hits home. If there’s one song that deserves to break out beyond the confines of the musical, it’s this one.
As the action proceeds through as much knockabout farce as is practical on the Turbine’s small stage, the cast – which on review night featured three understudies, including Josie Kemp doing sterling work in the lead role of Megan, turn what is a slight, silly narrative into something approaching a fable for love and acceptance.
Its moral centre would have been groundbreaking in the era of the original film. Now, nearly a quarter of a decade later, the real world’s continued reluctance of governments to address conversion therapy and outlaw the barbaric practices renders some of But I’m a Cheerleader’s jokier aspects slightly problematic in places. But that doesn’t detract too much from a fun musical that doesn’t just wear its heart on its sleeve, it embroiders it and fashions it in sequins.
Continues until 27 November 2022
