It’s a rare movie that begs to be adapted into a stage musical these days for anything other than the most crass commercial reasons. And Trevor, the Oscar-winning 1994 short film that inspired The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization with a mission to end suicide among LGBTQ youth, isn’t one that should have necessarily leaped off the screen and into the imaginations of prospective theater makers. Then again, its titular hero is a thirteen-year-old who worships Diana Ross, a setup that poses tantalizing possibilities even for those weariest of jukebox fare. Might Miss Ross appear as a character? Might her supreme catalog as a girl-group leader and solo artist be worked cleverly into an original score? Might the connection an anguished but irrepressible boy feels to an elusive diva, however one-sided, contribute to both funny and poignant moments?
The musical Trevor is here, and the answers, happily, are yes, yes, and yes. Librettist/lyricist Dan Collins and composer Julianne Wick Davis have fleshed out Celeste Lecesne’s story about a middle-school lad grappling with his sexuality in 1981 suburbia, and turned it into a show that is at once breezily entertaining and genuinely heartwarming. This feat is all the more impressive in light of current tensions concerning issues of sexual orientation and gender. In less intuitive hands—or under direction less adroit than that provided here by Marc Bruni—the results could have seemed preachy, or cloying, or quaint.
Instead, the creators and Bruni have retained the poignance with which Lecesne and the film’s director, Peggy Rajski, told their protagonist’s story—at a time when kids like Trevor suffered even more intolerance than they do today—while reminding us that some lights burn too brightly to be easily extinguished, and that empathy and compassion can pop up in the most unlikely places. How else to explain the bond between Trevor and Pinky Farraday, the ironically named male jock who is his secret crush? In the musical, Pinky defies contemporary stereotypes of toxic masculinity; after first being paired with Trevor by a merciless gym teacher for a basketball contest, the handsome, popular athlete shows a kindness that stumps his football teammates. When Trevor offers to choreograph a dance routine for the team for the school talent show—in lieu of a traditional stunt in which the guys flail around in tutus—Pinky is reluctant, until Frannie, the sweet girl he’s sweet on, indicates her approval.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
The friendship that develops between Trevor, who feels compelled to hide aspects of his emerging identity, and Pinky, who feels pressured to live up to his, is beautifully shaded by Collins and, with Bruni’s guidance, the young actors playing the boys. Holden William Hagelberger, the cherubic dynamo cast in the title role, channels both that inner light propelling Trevor and the crushing self-consciousness that diminishes it over a series of progressively humiliating episodes. As Pinky, the immensely likable Sammy Dell turns in a performance that is sensitive and charismatic, but appropriately restrained, making the cool kid both a convincing foil and a credible buddy. (When Pinky does turn against Trevor, his cruel behavior is not instinctive, but a reaction to peer pressure, revealing the alpha male’s own vulnerability.)
The other key relationship in Trevor is fantastical, but just as well-played. Diana Ross is the first character, or rather vision, that we see; summoned by Trevor’s imagination, she materializes, per the stage directions, as a “sparkling, heavenly creature floating in a spot of light”—one who will re-appear whenever our young hero needs encouragement, singing excerpts from hits (the “Theme From Mahogany,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Upside Down,” “Endless Love”) that Wick Davis weaves into her own bouncy, pop-savvy score. Granted, even among divas, Miss Ross has never been known as the cuddliest of personalities, but Yasmeen Sulieman, singing in a crystalline soprano and sporting an array of glittery costumes designed by Mara Blumenfeld, manages to make her saccharine sweetness a source of humor without dishonoring Trevor’s devotion.
Sally Wilfert and Jarrod Zimmerman also deliver more than comic prowess as Trevor’s distracted but increasingly concerned parents; both flirt with buffoonish stereotypes but transcend them as Collins’s libretto does. The younger actors, too, give winning performances—or in the case of those playing less sympathetic characters such as Pinky’s bullying friend Jason (Diego Lucano) or snooty mean girl Mary (Echo Deva Picone), effective ones.
A big part of this musical’s charm, though, is that Collins refuses to adopt the practice, so fashionable nowadays, of dividing the world into bullies and victims. Adolescence, in particular, was never an easy time, and the advent of social media has made it tougher. (As the mother of a fourteen-year-old, I know from whence I write.) Trevor may take us back to an era that had its own complications and injustices, but its positive spirit is so infectious that you end up feeling better about the future, at least for about two hours and twenty minutes.
Trevor opened November 10, 2021, at Stage 42. Tickets and information: trevorthemusical.com
