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| Show | Did He Like It?* |
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Good girl Mary's good deeds are met with dire consequences, and she is forced to question everything she’s ever believed. Through it all, she finds faith in unexpected places and learns what it truly means to be saved. Based on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Saved! |
At School, Sin’s a-Poppin’ and Cherubs Are Singing
*By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: June 4, 2008
Text messages are zipping this way and that, suffusing the suburban airwaves with digital indignation.
Did you hear? Mary is pregnant! OMG, no way!! But guess what? Dean is gay!!!
Just another day at the American Eagle Christian High School, the shiny happy place where the shiny happy new musical “Saved” takes place.
Based on a 2004 movie with a mild cult following, this tale of Christian youth struggling with big issues of faith and identity, sex and love, and prom dates involves some notable talents from the downtown theater scene. Michael Friedman, who composed the music, is the house tunesmith for the Civilians troupe. Rinne Groff, who shares credit for the book with John Dempsey, has had work produced at the Public Theater and Performance Space 122. (All three writers are credited with the lyrics.)
So why does “Saved” have the same sweet, sanitized flavor of so many market-tested, formula-born Broadway musicals these days? Why does it often feel like “Legally Blonde,” only with, like, Jesus freaks?
The answer may have something to do with the tricky subject matter. It is not easy to write credibly and sensitively for teenage characters, much less for singing teenage Christian zealots. The movie, written by Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban, took a haltingly mocking view of the Christian youth movement, with Mandy Moore playing Hilary Faye, the self-assured leader of the pack, a Heather with a halo.
Hilary goes into raptures of righteousness, first when she discovers that her friend Mary’s boyfriend Dean is gay, and later when Mary (played in the movie by Jena Malone) becomes pregnant. (Mary had been hoping to “cure” Dean, you see.) The film could not seem to decide whether it wanted to be a snarky cartoon or an instructive after-school special.
The musical’s creators have described their approach as more nuanced and forgiving. They have excised the exclamation point in the movie’s title for starters. But punctuation of any kind seems to have been removed from this bland, innocuous musical, which opened Tuesday night at Playwrights Horizons in a production directed by Gary Griffin (“The Color Purple”).
The stage “Saved” does not really give us more complex characters or a more realistic approach to the story. It is ultimately a big-hearted, feel-good fable about inclusion. The authors have simply added lots of music (it is nearly sung-through) and several spoonfuls of sugar without sacrificing many of the smirky gags at the expense of these youngsters’ bright-eyed belief. (Hilary Faye sings an impassioned song about “popping the zit of sin.”)
That ample music is the most disappointing contribution. Mr. Friedman has written many a nifty comic ditty for Civilians revues like “Gone Missing” and “(I Am) Nobody’s Lunch.” He recently composed the songs for the company’s documentary drama about the evangelical Christian movement in Colorado Springs, “This Beautiful City,” which will be seen at the Vineyard Theater next season. The music for “Saved” is, naturally enough, a lot like the music for that show: peppy, melodic, guitar-driven pop-rock that often rises in inspirational crescendos.
The aim is to scrupulously invoke the formulaic, up-with-Jesus sound of Christian radio. Unfortunately, the resulting score leaves the mind almost before it has hit the ear, and does little to distinguish the voices of the many characters. Perhaps the largely workmanlike lyrics are a result of writing by committee. (Although it is hard to believe it took three people to conceive the often repetitive choruses.)
The young cast is certainly talented and likable, but the characters they portray have little more depth than the bouncy types on tween-oriented television shows. The cherub-faced Celia Keenan-Bolger, in the central role of Mary, seems to be playing a girl considerably younger than 17. (She seems to be playing the junior high schooler she played in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”) In the recent concert version of Marc Blitzstein’s “Juno” at City Center, Ms. Keenan-Bolger proved that she can do more than sing with a silvery purity and act sweetly, so I suspect the fault lies primarily in the writing and direction.
“Saved” wants us to snicker at its characters’ peppy faith and blinkered morals — as when somebody denounces Dean’s “faggotry” — but see them as human beings too. In the modestly softened role of Hilary Faye, Mary Faber acts perky and judgmental at times, sympathetic at others. The only character imbued with a distinct personality is Cassandra (Morgan Weed), the school’s one Jewish student, who is rebellious and acid-tongued too. Oh, but with a good heart, of course, as evinced by her befriending of Roland (Curtis Holbrook), Hilary Faye’s subversive-minded brother, who uses a wheelchair.
A few more thoughtful passages in the second act bring rewards. The finest song in the score is probably “How To,” sung by Julia Murney, who plays Mary’s mother. Her fledgling romance with the school’s leader, Pastor Skip (John Dossett) is one of many subplots explored in shorthand.
And “Saved” concludes on a note of deliberate ambiguity, with a ruminative ballad stressing the tough road that lies ahead for all the kids. “I’ve been looking in a mirror darkly,” they sing. “But I never see clearly.”
It’s like a little asterisk appended to a go-team banner stretched across the back wall of the gym before the big game. Despite the traumatic, seriously adult problems its characters face, “Saved” makes adolescence seem like one long pep rally.
SAVED
Music and lyrics by Michael Friedman; book and lyrics by John Dempsey and Rinne Groff, based on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film written by Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban; directed by Gary Griffin; choreography by Sergio Trujillo; sets by Scott Pask; costumes by Jess Goldstein; lighting by Donald Holder; sound by Brian Ronan; music direction and additional arrangements by Jesse Vargas; orchestrations, Curtis Moore; music coordinator, John Miller; production manager, Christopher Boll. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director. At the Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 279-4200. Through June 22. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.
WITH: Josh Breckenridge (Shane), John Dossett (Pastor Skip), Mary Faber (Hilary Faye), Juliana Ashley Hansen (Lana), Curtis Holbrook (Roland), Van Hughes (Patrick), Celia Keenan-Bolger (Mary), Julia Murney (Lillian), Jason Michael Snow (Zac), Aaron Tveit (Dean), Emily Walton (Tia), Morgan Weed (Cassandra) and Daniel Zaitchik (Jesus/Nurse/Mitch).
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