The Prom
Book by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin
Music by Matthew Sklar
Lyrics by Chad Beguelin
Longacre Theatre
June 8, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

This show is “enough” is the best possible way.  It has enough humor, enough dance, enough music, enough laughs, and enough of a message.  It is the best time I have had watching a good ol’ musical comedy in years.  It is damm near perfect.  If felt like the writer of the book and director watched this show very carefully and made sure that everything was in the right portion.  I was worried that since it is about “show people” it was all going to be uncomfortably over the top – but, again it was just perfect.  The silliness and making fun of itself was just right.

It also had the right sense of heart and message.  As soon as I understood the story was going to trail the problems a teenage lesbian has in attending the prom – I KNEW that we were going to be handed this very obvious gay-pride message that would be totally unbelievable and neatly resolved.  But again I was wrong.  The mother of the lesbian girl is against her lifestyle from the start of the show – I get that – conflict.  But in the end of the show when given a few minutes to see the daughter as she actually is – she does NOT have a come-to-Jesus recant of all her prejudiced belief – no, she doesn’t suddenly understand the homosexual world.  She simply claims that she hopes that her daughter will not have a “difficult life”  and the best she can offer her daughter is a “talk later that night.”    How great that it doesn’t go to unbelievable conclusions!  How great that it keeps a grip on the real world while entertaining us each and every second.  This is simply the perfect musical!  I only wish more people would get to see it!