To the growing list of musicals having to do with suicide in one form or another, we can now add the mildly presentable Trevor. Near as I can figure, the suicide niche was kicked off in 1943 and Oklahoma!, when Curley drops into Jud’s shack, hoping to convince the gross fellow to take his own life. The trend has continued over a few decades with Les Miserables, Fun Home and Dear Evan Hansen.
For the Trevor advent, we also have to thank the increasing belief abroad in the musical theater community that any play or movie ever made is fodder for musicalization. I’m not going to insist the contention is wrong. It seems to me that if the right inspired people apply themselves to a property, they can produce something memorable.
Sorry to say that nowhere near enough inspiration came to Dan Collins and Julianne Wick Davis (lyricist/librettist and composer of the much more likable Southern Comfort) in their musicalization of the 1995 Academy Award—winning short subject Trevor, director Peggy Raiski’s adaptation of Celeste Lescene’s short story.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The very choice may have been too formidable for Collins and Wick. The Raiski film runs less than 25 minutes as it unfolds the tale of charming eighth-grader Trevor, who adores Diana Ross and prefers thinking of himself as a future show-biz type, not an athlete. Those ambitions, as well as a crush on older school jock Pinky, earn him the reputation as “a gay.” A sudden pariah, he decides his only recourse is to swallow a bottle of aspirins.
To repeat for emphasis: The Oscar winner takes well less than a half hour to succeed with such impact that it instigated The Trevor Project, which helps troubled LGBTQ youngsters. On the other hand, the musical Trevor takes two hours fifteen minutes to cover its course. Granted, the running time includes an intermission. Nevertheless, Collins and Wick have chosen to stuff nearly two hours into the filmed piece on which they’d set their sights.
As a result, Collins and Wick had to hustle much more action into Lescene’s story. And have they hustled! Trevor (the seemingly indefatigable Holden William Hagelberger), is now a fey youngster with metallic high notes, who over time becomes irritating. This happens often when the intense youngster is prodding Pinky (Sammy Dell) and football cronies to execute a top-hat-and-cane number for the annual eighth-grade revue. Usually, that year’s players appear in pink tutus. (N.B.: Pinky’s nickname, it’s revealed, was given him by his baseball-loving father’s admiration for a favorite player. Whether the fellow is Pinky Higgins or Pinky May is not specified.)
In other additions, Trevor’s Mom (Sally Wilfert) repeatedly enters his room saying “knock-knock,” which Trever repeatedly explains is not a proper knock. (That constitutes a running gag with no pay-off, just diminishing humor.) Furthermore, much ineffective Trevor time is given over to other students and their juvenile spats and love affairs.
The enlarged cast also serves as a challenge to choreographer Josh Prince, who must conjure movement for obvious non-dancers. His fallback is more drill than dance. Far too often, his charges are asked to lift chairs and march around in lifeless formations. Prince does conjure one terrific number, the one where the football players execute Trevor’s stylish routine. The sequence wakes the audience up big time.
And, of course, Collins and Wick had to drum up a score of songs for their two hours, fifteen minutes. What they offer is consistent with the types of tunes frequently heard in today’s new musicals. They’re like Kleenex treating song-cue sneezes the plot gives out. Handled by music director Matt Deitchman, they’re sung and quickly dispensed with.
By contrast, Diana Ross (Yasmeen Sulieman, a highly passable lookalike in an array of costume designer Mara Blumenfeld’s light-reflecting gowns) gets to sing snippets of the Supreme enchantress’s hits. Sulieman reprises them extremely well. Among those she intones Ross-like is the here-pertinent “I’m Coming Out.”
It’s not that these songs are a welcome relief because they’re familiar but because the hard-working Motown songsmiths knew what the public wanted in a step-out item. (With its large cast and the tony contributions from set designer Donyale Werle, lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski, and sound designers Brian Ronan and Cody Spencer, Trevor is already an expensive undertaking. Who knows what rights to the Motown Top 40-ers went for?)
Perhaps it could be said in its favor, and as directed by Marc Bruni, Trevor is cute, but when at one point Trevor is called ”cute,” he replies with some sophistication, “Cute is what delusional moms tell their children.”
Trevor opened November 10, 2021, at Stage 42. Tickets and information: trevorthemusical.com
