Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman draw on their own backgrounds for madcap memories of toiling on stage in classic musicals.
Ben Platt embraces the ‘discomfort and anxiety’ of ‘Parade,’ about the 1913 trial and subsequent lynching of Jewish American Leo Frank in Georgia.Gordon and Platt star as pretentious, codependent besties Rebecca-Diane and Amos, alumni and teachers at AdirondACTS. The community — and the “documentary” — is in crisis after camp director Joan Rubinsky suffers a seizure and falls into a coma during a middle school production of “Bye Bye Birdie.
While Troy is fumbling the business end of the camp, Amos and Rebecca-Diane are creatively floundering, attempting to stage their half-written original musical “Joan, Still,” about the life of their beloved, ailing leader, though the production is foiled by Rebecca-Diane’s odd disappearances. Harried technical director Glenn is the only person keeping things running behind the scenes, though his innate performance talents threaten to burst forth at any moment.
This madcap mockumentary works beautifully because Gordon, Lieberman, Platt and Galvin take care to imbue this setting with a real sense of culture and place, populated with wonderfully eccentric characters. The joy of “Theater Camp” is simply swimming around in this world, so perfectly rendered, down to every detail of costume design, and dense, referential dialogue.
Every scene feels snatched from a real moment; the edit is swift, propulsive and surgical in its precision. Gordon and Lieberman have skillfully staged every scene like a real documentary, no easy feat with this many child actors. However, these kids are extraordinary talents, belting out Sondheim with the fervor and passion of seasoned stage actors, while bringing a childlike innocence and glee to the proceedings. The joke is, of course, that the material is too advanced for them, and that the teachers treat them like little adults in this strange and special environment. At the end, a tiny moppet hugs Amos and thanks him for being hard on them, and he graciously accepts.
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