The Prom
Theater West End • Sanford, Florida
Music by Matthew Skylar
Directed by Tara Kromer
Starring Amanda Ortega, Madisen Rivera, and Laurie Sullivan
Who says high school doesn’t really matter? Well, I do, for one, but we all can agree it is the most important thing in the world when you are in the middle of it. And then there’s a sneaky little thing called The Prom, where your social connections are laid bare, even if you don’t have any. Set that prom in a small Midwestern town with few prospects, and it’s even worse. Sadly, prom might actually be the best day of these kids’ lives, and thus nothing can be amiss.
So here’s the cherry on the cake: Emma (Ortega) wants to go to her small-town prom and make the bold move of coming out along with her very close friend Alyssa (Rivera). Naturally, there’s controversy in the press, and a band of semi-washed up Broadway C- listers decides to fly to Indiana and make the world right. Can you even get an airplane to Indiana? Maybe just a little one… And therein lies the city mouse/country mouse comedy of this production: the city mice are stuck in the flatlands, where there’s no decent deli anywhere in sight, the Motel 6 is completely devoid of suites, and it doesn’t even have larger rooms to sort out status. How can people live like that?
The first act of this boisterous comedy begins with the washed-up city mice struggling to survive in the heartland of the flyover states. It’s a classic comedy of manners, the big-city, over-the-top flamboyant Broadway hipsters attempting to map their logic and social ideas to rural small-town America. Gay is OK in NYC, but in rural Indiana it’s not so safe. This way-off-off-off Broadway team did a great job as over-the-top screaming stereotypes, although they did tend to overwhelm Emma and her more heartfelt dating problems. Any issues Emma had were blown away by the star’s ego. The lead exploiter tonight is Dee Dee (Sullivan), she drives the misapplied good intentions into a local social disaster. Even the local homophobe sportsball guys seem to pull back: “We don’t like what Emma is doing, but that’s OUR problem, and we don’t need you washed up New Yorkers to make things even worse.” Amen, sister.
We find not only a personal story and a closed community debating who and what they are, but also a cautionary tale of outsiders riding into town to save the oppressed without knowing exactly what the local oppression is. There’s plenty to talk about on the ride home, and I counted no less than a dozen showstopper tunes on this program.
This show is a 2019 Drama Desk Award winner and ran and Theater West End August 4 – 27, 2023.
