Bring It On: The Musical

Ahmanson Theatre

Los Angeles

(213) 972-4400

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Never before have I been “so aware of calories burned onstage,” said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. The “bounding, flipping, tumbling” choreography in this musical inspired by a 2000 teen movie is a vivid reminder of how cheerleading has lately evolved into a “daredevil contact sport.” Alas, the deeply revised story by Avenue Q creator Jeff Whitty dampens the excitement. The show, here making its first stop of a nationwide tryout tour, centers on a perky suburban cheerleader (Taylor Louderman) who has been redistricted into an inner-city high school where the cheer squad serves as a “multicultural underdog” in interschool competitions. That simple plot is padded by “silly dream sequences” and more, but even the most energetic detours “had me yawning.”

Whitty’s only truly smart move was to downplay the school rivalry that fueled the film version, said Bob Verini in Variety. By beefing up the role of a villainous sophomore on the protagonist’s former cheer squad, he’s created an All About Eve–like subplot that’s “complicated but never very interesting.” Fortunately, the team-written score contains enough “cleverness top to bottom” to mostly keep things moving: Lin-Manuel Miranda surely deserves credit for the high-grade rapping at Jackson High, butLin-Manuel Miranda and Next to Normal’s Tom Kitt obviously contributed their talents too. Bring It On won’t win any championships as is, but the show has enough other promising elements that it should “readily qualify for regionals.”