Trevor (Holden William Hagelberger, left) and Pinky (Sammy Dell) share a moment.
Back in 1995, the Oscar for Best Live Action Short went to the edgy comedy Trevor. Set in 1981, it chronicles a 13-year-old boy’s suicidal tendencies and homosexual awakening, complete with clueless parents, a worrisome priest and plenty of Diana Ross fanboying. The screenwriter, Celeste Lecesne, would go on to co-create The Trevor Project, the LGBTQ suicide-prevention nonprofit, as well as to pen and perform the delightful solo show, The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey.
Lecesne, however, is absent from the creative team of Trevor: The Musical, and gone, too, is the gamble that gave the film its spark: the writerly risk that suicide can work as a running gag because to mock an atrocity is to take away its power.
Rather than exploring Trevor’s morbid curiosity, which in the movie manifests itself as playing dead to get his parents’ attention, writer/lyricist Dan Collins eliminates the kink entirely, so that by the time Trevor (Holden William Hagelberger) does consider ending it all, the tonal shift of this otherwise cheery, kid-friendly show is shattering. That’s fair enough, but the fact that Trevor finds a path forward with the help of a hospital candy striper and the former lead singer of The Supremes, rather than through the guidance of a mental health professional, is the sign of an adaptation trying to have it both ways.
Trevor (Hagelberger) seeks guidance from Diana Ross (Yasmeen Sulieman). Photographs by Joan Marcus.
The resulting, earnest musical has Trevor discovering his sexual and social orientation with the help of two nerdy friends, a jock, a nice girl, a mean girl and an eight-member ensemble of talented youths. Mom and Dad (Sally Wilfert and Jarrod Zimmerman) jump from film to stage with their same lack of parenting skills. Yes, the priest (Zimmerman) is still around, but now considerably more down-to-earth. And Diana Ross (Yasmeen Sulieman), staged as Trevor’s imaginary friend and constant source of inspiration, has not seen so much Manhattan stage time since she played Central Park.
The nerds, Walter (Aryan Simhadri) and Cathy (Alyssa Emily Marvin), are the most endearing of the lot. When Walter and Trevor perform “Underneath,” sparked by the eroticism within an underwear catalog, Simhadri’s testosterone-induced dancing is a hilarious counterpoint to Hagelberger’s wonderment that his character prefers the catalog’s pantless men. And poor Cathy is forever removing the rubber bands from her braces in hope of being kissed. Marvin performs a beautifully rendered, frustrated lament, “What’s Wrong with You?”, when Trevor resists her:
What’s wrong with me
I never knew
The problem’s always been I never had a clue
That the real question all along
Is Trevor: What is wrong with you?
Sammy Dell is sympathetic in his portrayal of Pinky, the basketball star and Trevor’s obsession. Trevor’s highest high is getting to choreograph a dance for Pinky and his teammates to perform in the school talent show. In a fantasy sequence, “One/Two,” the number echoes the finale of A Chorus Line. But the actual results, paired with Pinky’s reaction when he learns of Trevor’s crush, leads Trevor to a dark place and a bottle of pills.
As Ross, Sulieman sings with power but, under the direction of Marc Bruni, struggles to solve the problem of portraying the pop superstar. Neither a diva nor a compassionate soul à la Dorothy in The Wiz, this Diana comes across as standoffish, ablaze and untouchable in Mara Blumenfeld’s vivid costuming.
This eight-shows-a-week production asks a lot of its young lead in his New York debut. He is on stage for nearly every scene and responsible for numerous songs and a couple full-out dance numbers, not to mention crying on cue. If Hagelberger’s performance is somewhat less than effortless, he is successful in being convincingly awkward, and quite funny when called upon to toss off a theater joke. When the kids go to make out at an abandoned construction site, he observes, “It would be an incredible place to stage West Side Story.”
“The nerds are the most endearing of the lot. ”
The music, emanating from an actual orchestra pit in the very Broadway-like, Off-Broadway Stage 42 theater, sounds heavily synthesized (There are orchestral Playbill credits not only for keyboardist Mike Pettry, but for keyboard programmer Randy Cohen.). The score, by Julianne Wick Davis, is bouncy though, with snippets of several Ross hits sewn throughout the work, audience members are as likely to leave the theater humming “Endless Love,” as they are “My Imagination,” Trevor’s stirring closing anthem, “What if who I hid is who I get to be somehow?/What if weird is only different, what if different isn’t wrong?”
Trevor: The Musical is scheduled through April 17 at Stage 42 (422 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday; and at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Masks and proof of vaccination are required. For tickets and information, visit trevorthemusical.com.
