I’ll
admit that I can be somewhat snobbish when it comes to my media. I’m all about Stephen Sondheim shows, Wong
Kar-wai films, Tom Stoppard plays, and so on.
As such, “musical based on the franchise of cheerleading movies” isn’t
something that would ordinarily make an appearance on my blog. Bring
It On, however, is awesome, so the haters can forget it.
The
story is simple but well told. Campbell,
the newly-elected cheerleading captain at Truman High, finds out that she’s
being redistricted out of her affluent, lily-white school. She will instead be spending her senior year
at Jackson, an inner-city school with metal detectors, a completely foreign
social order, and no cheerleading squad.
She awkwardly tries to make friends in her new environment. At the top of her list is Danielle, the
passionate, proud leader of Jackson’s dance crew; Campbell hopes to tweak the
crew into a squad that can hold its own in cheerleading competitions.
The
characters, while a bit stock, are drawn affectionately; Truman’s cheerleaders are
an entertaining mix of bitchy and ditzy, and the motley Jackson crowd is
vibrant and loveable. Earnest emotion
and amusing one-liners jazz up the familiar beats of the story. Plus, there are a number of good themes in
the show – well-trod ideas about friendship, values vs. victory, and being true
to oneself, but again, it’s done well and with heart.
It was
the behind-the-scenes crew that put this musical on my radar. The score is a collaboration between Tom Kitt
(half of the team behind Next to Normal)
and Lin-Manuel Miranda (who composed In
the Heights, one of my favorite scores of the last ten years,) with some additional
lyrics by Amanda Green, who I’m not familiar with but who does a fine job. If you know either of the shows above, you
probably realize, as I did, that you’re in for a smart, stylish score with a
nice mix of pop-rock, hip-hop, and Broadway knowhow.
Our
composing team definitely delivers. The
songs are cool, catchy, and theatrical, with clever lyrics that are by turns
funny, touching, and impressively-rhymed.
From “What I Was Born to Do,” the energetic I-want number that opens the
show, the music explodes engagingly through the score. I love the driving beats of the scene-song “Do
Your Own Thing,” the playful attitude of “We Ain’t No Cheerleaders,” the
message of the love-yourself anthem “It Ain’t No Thing,” and the pure ideals of
the gorgeous “Cross the Line.” It’s hard
to pick favorite lyrics in a show with a lot of gems, but I’ll take a stab at
it. For serious lines, there’s Campbell’s
lovely, contemplative, “High in the air, there is a moment just before you
start to fall - / Live in that one moment.”
And for humorous lines, it’s hard to beat Twig’s wry, “What, are y’all
scared? / Y’all think cheering is feminine? / Then I’m a feminist swimmin’-in /
Women, gentlemen!”
Additionally, one of the girls at Jackson - La Cienega - has probably the tragedy-free plot of any trans character in history. Is it true to the high school experience of most trans kids? Maybe not, but it's heartening to see her happily loving who she is without being hated for it. I'm just sayin'.
Warnings
A
little swearing and some light sexual references.
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