Attended Saturday’s matinee of the new musical 13. What fun to hear so many young kids in the audience having such a wonderful time at this Junior High School Musical. What a horrific experience to have in front of me a constantly shifting-in-his-seat pre-adolescent who is an excellent candidate for Ritalin. Anyway, let’s go on with the show, and my 13 observations of 13.
1. Dan Elish and Robert Horn have created a story where Evan Goodman, who lives on West 92nd Street, is looking forward to having all his Upper West Side friends to his upcoming bar-mitzvah. Then his world caves in when his parents split, which is worsened when his mother whisks him away to Appleton, Indiana. Now Evan is hoping so make some nice new friends to populate his Midwestern bar-mitzvah.
Now wait a minute: What kind of mother pulls her kid away from New York and every one of his friends without giving him his bar-mitzvah there? Certainly by now, she’s made some definite arrangements – at least booking the hall. I recall that Doug Cohen told me what date to save around a year before his son segued into manhood, and Ellen Goosenberg Kent gave me even more notice that that – so I’m sure Mrs. Goodman had signed plenty of contracts. She could have eased the pain of taking Evan away from his friends by allowing him one, big farewell party before he heads to the hinterlands. Even if the bar-mitzvah had been scheduled for after the moving date, a good mother would have undoubtedly arranged for them to return to New York to celebrate this big event. No wonder during the show’s entire 95 minutes, we never see Mrs. Goodman. She probably doesn’t show her face because she’s ashamed -- and she should be.
2. The thrust of the story becomes Evan’s desperately hoping that he makes enough new friends to attend his bar-mitzvah in his new home-town. I’d think it more likely that Evan would be so furious at being displaced that he’d refuse an Indiana bar-mitzvah. I understand that to the Indiana kids, the party afterwards would be the more important component, but still, having Gentiles for an hour or two at a predominantly Hebrew ceremony could well make Evan seem odder in their eyes. I’d say he’d want to avoid having them there.
3. The first person Evan meets in Appleton is Patrice, a lovely lass who agrees that this is “The Lamest Place in the World.” She’s so terrific that some theatergoers may be surprised to learn in a few scenes that she’s not popular. Eventually, she tells us, “I don’t read what they read, shop where they shop, watch what they watch, or think like they think.” Anyway, once Evan finds that Brett, the coolest kid in town – meaning the athlete, of course -- and all the others won’t come to his bar-mitzvah if Patrice comes, Evan does something despicable. Patrice begrudgingly forgives him, but then Evan follows his disgrace up with something almost as bad. Fool her once, shame on you; fool her twice, twice the shame on you. Evan’s later statement that “We all have mood swings” doesn’t excuse him. What’s worse, later in the show, Evan tells off Brett, claiming, “You suck” and “Man, you’re such a jerk, I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out.” But I didn’t see Brett do anything as bad as the two things Evan did to Patrice.
4. A big plot point involves boys wanting “tongue” from the girls. But even in Appleton, Indiana, haven’t 13-year-olds progressed to being more sexually ambitious than to settle for mere French-kissing? If you google “oral sex” and “pre-teens” you’ll have a choice of 401,000 hits; the front page offers “Try not to overreact when your 10-year-old asks what oral sex is” and “Oral sex among adolescents; is it sex, or is it abstinence?” In a way, I’m grateful that the authors didn’t choose oral sex as the kids’ goal -- and I'm sure they did so parents wouldn't keep their kids away -- but “tongue” just doesn’t ring true as a big issue in late 2008.
5. Evan makes a friend named Archie, who is disabled and must walk with crutches. But Aaron Simon Gross, the appealing actor who plays him, shows us at the curtain call that he is able-bodied. Perhaps the rigors of appearing in such a high-powered, fast-moving musical might have been too much for a genuinely disabled lad, but what a shame that such a kid wasn’t cast, given that there aren’t many opportunities for such young actors.
6. Late in the show, Kendra, the reigning babe of the school, greets Archie by calling him “Arnie.” It’s not meant to be a slip of speech, but that Arnie is what she really believes to be his name. True, Kendra is set up to be not the brightest kid around, one who knows Ugly Betty but not Ugo Betti. But in a small town, everyone knows the name of the kid who’s on crutches. Besides, isn’t the calling-a-character-you-should know-by-a-wrong-name device terribly tired?
7. Jason Robert Brown’s music is really good – and that may be a very strange problem. There’s a marvelous ‘50s doo-wop number and a couple of snazzy vaudeville turns – but such sounds are not this generation’s music. Maybe we should be grateful that Brown’s music is much better than the horrific sounds that real 13-year-olds embrace in this day and age, but it still seemed too good and therefore wrong.
8. Brown’s lyrics occasionally betray a need to rhyme at the cost of what kids would really say. That’s apparent from the very first lyric, where Evan sings, “Picture me, just another cool kid in N.Y.C.” No, he’d say “New York” – but that doesn’t rhyme with “me.” Later, about attending a movie, he sings, “Talk to my mom and get her to buy the tickets we need to obtain.” Why are those last four words necessary? To rhyme with the upcoming “complain.” Perhaps worst of all is “immersed in” hooking up with “burstin’” – because it’s used by Brett, who doesn’t seem the type to use “immersed.” Credit to Brown for something he gives Lucy, the town troublemaker (deftly played by Elizabeth Egan Gillies, who should join the afterschool club called Future Sheilas-in-Chorus-Line of America). Brown has Lucy spread gossip by phoning kids and saying “Everything Charlotte says is a lie” – which is a neat way of saying “This is a lie, too, and I’m warning you that it is, but I’m going to make you believe it.”
9. Jeremy Sams has directed splendidly, allowing 13 to be the slickest show in town. While we’re only talking about a 95-minute musical, it moves at a swift pace that makes it seem even shorter. Considering, too, that Sams was working with kids, many of whom have “Broadway debut!” in their Playbill bios, that’s even more of an accomplishment.
10. Nice enough job by the 13 teens who populate the cast, for the most part. Oh, sure, there’s a ragged voice every now and then, and some line readings that ring false, but, good Lord, these are children, and these babes deserve to be welcomed with open arms. I’ve seen literally thousands of worse performances on Broadway by grown men and women who have studied longer and have had more stage dust under their feet. I’m happy for these kids, too, who were at the right place at the right time – and at the right age – to appear in a Broadway show. Note to the cast: As you’ve undoubtedly learned from stage door crowds, millions upon millions of kids wish they could be you (and just as many adults do as well).
11. Costume designer David Farley has clothed the kids in duds that seem right enough for the Midwest, but he missed an opportunity to put Evan in sharper clothes that came from some trendy New York emporium. It’d be another way of having this stranger-in-a-strange land stand out – especially in these times when teens are more fashion-conscious.
12. The theme of learning who your real friends are is certainly a worthy one; most of us have been learning it well past our teenage years, as we’ve found that sometimes people leave you halfway through the woods. So the message of 13 will do a lot of kids a lot of good.
13. Still, with song that states, “We All Have a Little More Homework to Do” the creators of 13 would have been well-advised to take their own advice and make their musical a much better one.
You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com
