When I went with my friend Ben to see Bring it On: The Musical, he asked me, “Are these broadway actors who learned how to cheer or cheerleaders who learned how to be broadway actors?”
“A valid question,” I answered. “I have no idea.”
And that’s how I pretty much felt going into the show.
I, being an avid and ironic fan of the first movie with Kirsten Dunst (GO TOROS!), was skeptical in how this musical would handle a campy movie about the world of saccharine-injected competitive cheerleading that I fell in love with and made fun of at the same time. The movie is in my pop culture rolodex and for it to have “The Musical” pinned at the end of it kind of disrupts my cultural space-time continuum. It also could tarnish the image of something that I have lukewarm adoration for. Then again, this is exactly how I felt about Legally Blonde: The Musical — and I loved that. But then again, Big: The Musical was a hellacious feat of suckage.
There are plenty of Broadway bigwigs involved in Bring it On: The Musical that were involved in such musical triumphs such as In The Heights, Avenue Q, and Next to Normal. I never saw In the Heights, but I did enjoy the lewdness of Avenue Q and the emotionally intense music of Next to Normal — so I did have some faith.
The musical does not compare to the movie because – well – it’s a totally different story. There are no Toros, there are no Clovers, and, sadly, the R&B group Blaque does not make an appearance. The story keeps in line with the first one in that head cheerleading captain Campbell (Taylor Louderman) lives and breathes the life of a popular cheerleader at her suburban high school (a.k.a. A WHITE HIGH SCHOOL). When a bout of redistricting happens, she is uprooted and placed in an inner-city high school (a.k.a. A BLACK HIGH SCHOOL) and they do not have a cheer squad — but they sure do have a lot of people dressed in Forever 21/Urban Outfitters attire dancing in the hallways and singing some damn good hip-hop. She clashes then eventually befriends the school’s resident diva, Danielle (Adrienne Warren) — but then
The story is essentially a mash-up of all 217 cinematic incarnations of Bring it On and spread with a sugary glaze of Glee and High School Musical. Add a handful of the use of the word “bitch” and you got yourself a fairly entertaining and “edgy-enough” show. I say “fairly” because there’s a whole lot going on. So much that I imagined Stefon from Saturday Night Live reviewing it:
If you are looking for a good musical, you can look no further that Bring it On: The Musical. It has everything: a fat girl in a bird costume, insecure male cheerleaders, a former So You Think you Can Dance contestant who sings a song about sparkling ponies, a transvestite inner-city diva, a bitchy cheerleader named Skylar and her minion Kylar who wears cowboy boots, basket tosses, a motivating trio of girls singing a Motown-ish, uplifting song about loving yourself, a psychotic skinny single white female who impersonates Taylor Swift, a girl in a leprechaun mascot costume doing a booty pop…
Yes. All of that is in this musical.
Most of all, the musical does not take itself TOO seriously — which is it’s strength. For instance, they took a playful jab at the overused “white girl coming to an inner-city school to save the ethnic people” storyline (cause we can never get enough of that, huh?)
The creators couldn’t do much to make Bring it On:The Musical a brilliant piece of musical theater — but they did can make it entertaining, fun, relevant, and clever. In fact, there were moments when it was more clever than the movie. The musical didn’t have me doing back handsprings out the door, but it did leave me with a spirited smile of satisfaction.
Bring It On: The Musical is showing at the Orpheum Theatre now through January 7, 2012. Visit www.shnsf.com for tickets.
Photos by: Craig Schwartz and Michael Lamont
- Excited
- Fascinated
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry
