The Prom
Opening Night: November 15, 2018
Closing: August 11, 2019
Theater: Longacre Theatre
See the next hit from Broadway’s Musical Comedy Dream Team – the geniuses behind The Book of Mormon, Aladdin, The Drowsy Chaperone, Elf, Mean Girls…must we go on? What happens when four stars leave the bright lights of Broadway and take leading roles in a small-town controversy making national headlines? Big drama. Bigger laughs. And the biggest musical showstopper in years! Starring Tony Award® nominee Brooks Ashmanskas (Something Rotten!), Tony Award winner Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone) and two-time Tony Award nominee Christopher Sieber (Shrek) leading a cast of 27.
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November 15, 2018
Your prom probably didn’t have a glorious gaggle of Broadway troupers and their trunk loads of self-regard and narcissism gumming things up for your rite of passage – more’s the pity – but in some ways I’d guess Broadway’s musical The Prom isn’t so unlike the one you lived through way back when. The build-up was more fun than the event, right? Inspired by an actual event – and the inspired is apt – The Prom is the latest razzle-dazzle show-biz love fest from director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who applied the same glitz and show-biz glitter to Mean Girls, Aladdin and, more to the point here, Something Rotten!, that great mash-up of the Bard and Broadway. Comparisons won’t do The Prom much good – Something Rotten it isn’t, but it tries.
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November 15, 2018
If Forbidden Broadway and the John Hughes teen films that ruled the ’80s had a queer baby, it might look something like the frothy new musical comedy, The Prom. That means the show is one part satire, packed with delicious theatrical in-jokes delivered with aplomb by game stage veterans playing caricatures of themselves; and one part inclusivity teaching moment, reminding us there’s a place for everyone beneath the Mylar balloons at a high school dance, even in conservative Indiana. If the two halves aren’t entirely seamless, especially in the uneven second act, the show has enough humor and heart to paper over the cracks. With its elements of cruel ostracism in the high school corridors and its buoyant dance explosions of adolescent hormonal vitality, The Prom sometimes seems just a short hop from director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s last Broadway success, Mean Girls. But the affectionate skewering of self-aggrandizing stage troupers also nods back to Nicholaw’s 2006 production, The Drowsy Chaperone, which featured one of this show’s stars, Beth Leavel, as a similarly outsize diva.
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November 15, 2018
“The Prom” begins when a theater critic for The New York Times writes a pan so poisonous that the show he’s reviewing dies on the spot. That’s ridiculous. It could never happen. At any rate, it won’t happen now, because “The Prom,” which opened on Thursday at the Longacre Theater, is such a joyful hoot. With its kinetic dancing, broad mugging and belty anthems, it makes you believe in musical comedy again. These days, that takes some doing. How, after all, with so much pain in the air and so many constraints on what’s allowed to be funny, do we find the heart and permission to laugh?
READ THE REVIEWNovember 15, 2018
In the wake of the midterm elections, the pollsters are telling us that America is growing even more politically polarized, and that we’re less willing than ever before to listen to those with whom we disagree. If that’s so, what effect will this heightened polarization have on the world of theater, a one-party state whose citizens usually vote for the most progressive candidate? For my part, I expect to see fewer political plays whose purpose is to persuade the unsure, and more that seek instead to lift the spirits of true believers, rather in the manner of an old-fashioned revival meeting. Fortunately, there’s more than one way to stimulate the faithful. Witness “The Prom,” the new Broadway musical about what happens when Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen), a small-town lesbian, tries to take Alyssa (Isabelle McCalla), her closeted girlfriend, to the senior prom. The results are a bit sanctimonious in spots, but most of “The Prom” is really, really funny—and much of it, to my happy surprise, is funny at the expense of the good guys.
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November 15, 2018
It seems like a dubious musical mash-up: Broadway narcissists-turned-activists take over a middle-American town to help a lesbian teen who just wants to bring her date to the prom. But with a tuneful score, a playful book, and performances that remind you what Broadway heart and chutzpah are all about, this cause celebre of a show turns out to be a joyous, funny, and sweet production that should appeal to several generations of musical fans. Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”) and Chad Beguelin (“Aladdin”) wrote the lively, tender, big-laugh book — based on an original concept by Jack Viertel — for the musical that premiered at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater two years ago. It’s a 21st century “Bye Bye Birdie,” with showbiz interlopers causing havoc before finding their better selves — but re-imagined with a millennial slant and an echo of “Dear Evan Hansen” empowerment.
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