Pride Month starts early at Pioneer Theatre Company’s The Prom
LGBTQ+
The Prom
Pioneer Theatre Company
May 12–27
Monday–Thursday 7 PM.
Friday and Saturday 7:30 PM.
Saturday 2 PM.
In 2010 a small school in Mississippi made international news after canceling their prom because one queer student wished to bring her girlfriend as her date. Following backlash, the school announced that they would go through with the prom for “equality’s sake.” Claiming the queer students could have their school-sponsored private prom and the rest of the student body could have their own, parents in the community organized a secret prom excluding the queer students. When the news of this broke, celebrities fully funded an inclusive prom for all of the queer students in the area.
Playwrights Chad Beguelin, Bob Martin and Matthew Sklar created the musical The Prom based almost entirely on these events. In this Pioneer Theatre Company production, we follow our lesbian heroine, Emma (Celeste Rose), as she copes with the news that prom is canceled because the school board and PTA believe it’s better to not have prom at all than to exclude her for wanting to bring her girlfriend. Emma’s peers bully her horrendously, and we learn that her parents threw her out for being gay.
Supported by her school principal (Bernard Dotson) and four eccentric Broadway stars (Branch Woodman, Josh Adamson, Wendy Waring, Anne Topelgin), Emma decides to rise above the bigotry and encourages other queer students to live their truth and be proud of their identities. She decides she will not apologize for loving who she wants to love because there is nothing wrong with her.
After being deceived by the PTA who threw a prom in secret, Emma (with the funds provided by the Broadway actors) puts on an inclusive prom where her partner Alyssa (Mia Cherise Hall) puts on a suit and outs herself to the school and her homophobic mother.
The “adult” cast in this show were next to forgettable, and the “teen” cast and ensemble were brilliant. I can’t tell if this was an actor problem or a playwright problem, though. It feels like the adult characters didn’t have much to work with, and what they had made them extremely unlikeable. While that may be the point for Act I, they certainly should have been redeemed in Act II.
Woodman grew on me throughout Act II and completely sold me on his character, almost moving me to tears during his number “Barry is Going to Prom”. During this piece, Woodman’s character is finally able to work through the trauma of not going to his prom because of his identity and fully embraces going and supporting Emma at hers.
Dotson deserves an honorable mention because his character, while not feeling entirely honest at times in his portrayal, was genuinely likable the entire show.
Aside from the phenomenal (and diversely cast!) ensemble numbers, Rose and Hall astounded me as Emma and Alyssa. From their first duet together to the finale, every moment spent with them was relatable, honest and filled with moving harmonies. This is one of the few queer stories in theater told about woman-loving-woman characters, and they nailed it.
Technically speaking, the costumes and the lighting were the highlights of this show, and how could they not be? This is prom—if ever there was a time for costumer Patrick Holt to shine, this was it. The finale sees the entire company in coordinated shades of the rainbow, and our two lead actresses wear a coordinated suit and glittery dress–combo that I adored.
Opening night for The Prom was truly something to see. A lot of audience members were wearing prom attire, and the audience comprised diverse queer couples and friends. It seems that the queer community showed up and showed off.
Despite the story’s missteps, The Prom got to me. I was holding back tears by the end of the show. In fact, the elderly gay man sitting next to me reached over and held my hand during the finale. When I looked up, I noticed that he and his partner were crying, and so was the couple in front of me and the couple on my other side.
Theater is powerful, and there is something unbelievably empowering about hearing a story that mirrors your own and being told that a whole community understands your trauma. The queer community’s truth deserves to be seen, and in this case it was seen, sung and danced cathartically. The Prom may have fallen short on some things, but what Pioneer Theatre Company produced is a heartbreakingly accurate look at a modern queer love story.
The Prom runs at Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre May 12–27. Get tickets at pioneertheatre.org. –Payton Rhyan Wright
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