Ah, theater kids… you gotta love ‘em, right? If you do love them Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s Theater Camp is for you. If you don’t love them Theater Camp is also for you. Extending their short film of the same name, Gordon, Lieberman (and co-writers Ben Platt and Noah Galvin – who also star with Gordon) pay a loving Waiting for Guffman styled tribute to the precocious talents and their overly serious mentors with sly winks to everything from America’s Next Top Model, Glee, Wet Hot American Summer and slew of musicals, famous or otherwise.
The film begins with a sweet montage of tiny talents – actually lifelong friends Gordon and Ben Platt filmed on home video. Yes, that’s really them, and yes, they aren’t afraid to imagine what their lives would have been like if they weren’t actually from, shall we say, industry connected families. That isn’t to say that Molly Gordon and Ben Platt didn’t work hard, but the leg up is not insignificant.
In Theater Camp the pair are once again lifelong friends with an unhealthily symbiotic relationship whose dreams of the big time and Julliard have gone bust. Instead, they are camp counsellors at AdirondACTS, an upstate New York yearly camp for young hopefuls. When the owner of the camp and their mentor, Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris) suffers a seizure that results in a coma, music teacher, Rebecca-Diane (Gordon) and acting teacher, Amos (Platt) have to step up to keep the summer camp from going under in the hands of Joan’s clueless Chad Hanks styled son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro). Troy is a bro “entrepreneur” who doesn’t know his Fosse from his dental floss and is immediately on the outside with the insiders who just happen to be a bunch of revved up children.
The jokes fly thick and fast, sometimes a little too fast considering the wealth of talent that’s on the screen. We see the third-generation stagehand, Glenn Winthrop (Noah Galvin) who has been placing the spotlight on talent for years but just might be something of a wunderkind himself. There’s Nathan Lee Graham as movement coach Clive DeWitt (bringing big Miss J. Alexander vibes), and the budding Andre Leon Talley costume designer, Gigi Charbonier (Owen Thiele) whose lack of talent as an actor and singer has brought him to glam up twelve-year-olds. Reliable comic talent Ayo Edebiri has a side role as a stage craft teacher, Janet, who lied on her application and is just making it up all on the spot.
The chaos of “making it up on the spot” is built into Theater Camp. When the proposed lead of ‘Joan, Still’ the completely inappropriate musical that Rebecca-Diane and Amos are staging gets a better offer, the show must go on… and go on it does to hilarious results (feather boa cocaine lines at Club 54 abound).
There is so much going on in Gordon and Lieberman’s film that sometimes you wish that it would slow down just a little to let it breathe. The bountiful child talent on screen including Bailee Bonick as Mackenzie (our Rachel Berry) and Alan Kim as would-be agent Alan Park don’t get nearly as much time as characters as they deserve. They are there to be of service to the script and the genesis of many of the adult jokes, but the whole film rests on the fact that we need to feel how important the overwrought camp is to the kids. It’s made abundantly clear how essential it is to the so-called adults, but the heart really must remain with the wonderful junior talent onscreen.
Theater Camp is filled with deep affection and wit, and more than a touch of self-deprecation for Platt and Gordon. It’s a loving absurdity that knows the power of transformation a moment in the spotlight can have for any outsider. Whether that outsider be a queer kid who only has the chance to be themselves in an environment built to foster them, or a permanent disappointment who has the chance once a year to relive the best time of their lives. One would like to think Christopher Guest is applauding somewhere in the back row at Gordon and Lieberman’s contemporary rendering of his beloved mockumentaries. Almost everyone involved can take a bow and be rightly gifted their laurels.
Directors: Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman
Cast: Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Ben Platt
Writers: Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, Ben Platt, (based on Theater Camp by Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, Ben Platt)
