Grace Krebs (Lauren Elder), her daughter (Brittany Nicole Williams), and Mrs. Parker (Badia Farha) have a confrontation.
The first thing to know about The Gospel According to Heather: It’s way out of author Paul Gordon’s wheelhouse. Gordon, the rare writer who creates book, music, and lyrics, specializes in adaptations of lofty classics, most prominently Jane Eyre. His 2009 version of Daddy Long Legs gets produced a lot (while convincing some of us that epistolary musicals aren’t a great idea). For The Gospel According to Heather he turns thoroughly contemporary, with an original story so current that there are jokes about drag storybook hour, Dylan Mulvaney’s Budweiser ad, and the congressional tussle over gas ovens. Heather, like its title character, isn’t perfect, but it has more on its mind than the average musical comedy, and it dispenses its outrage with verve and good humor.
Heather consents to a podcast interview with the horrendous Booker (Jeremy Kushnier).
At first, this seems like Kimberly Akimbo territory—Sharonville, Ohio, instead of New Jersey, but in the firmly middle-class burbs, among a rainbow coalition of high school misfits and fits. Heather Krebs (Brittany Nicole Williams—is it a coincidence that Theater 555 is run by Eric Krebs?) is friendless, and smarter than her classmates—into Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Kant. She does acquire a best bud, Kaisley (Maya Lagerstam), who’s popular and knows about boys: “If they can’t get laid, they fight. Thank God we have shopping.” Heather is burdened with an overprotective mom (Lauren Elder) and a sullen, TV-addicted little brother (Zach Rand), and the only other person she feels any major kinship with is the catatonic, wheelchair-bound woman she visits at the senior center (Katey Sagal, so inert that at first we worry about her; but relax, she’s in fine shape, and has a corker of an 11 o’clock number).
Is it or isn’t it a romance? Heather and Zach (Carson Stewart).
Strange things have been happening to Heather. Her wounds are automatically healing, the water in her bottle is turning into wine or at least grape juice, and did she just bring Zach (Carson Stewart), a cute mysterious stranger, back from the dead after his fight with a local tough? To divulge any more plot would constitute spoilers galore, but let’s just say that Heather’s seemingly supernatural powers aren’t entirely her imagination. Her odd abilities send her teacher, Mrs. Parker (Badia Farha), scrambling for answers and arouse the wrath of Booker (a splendid Jeremy Kushnier), an infuriating local reactionary podcaster whose come-ons are as funny as they are all too credible: “Coming up: Is cancel culture coming after your God-given right to silence those you disagree with?”
We hate Booker, and so does Gordon. But self-satisfied far-right sententiousness isn’t the only thing bothering the author. He also vents on the changing dynamics of friendship in the current social media era; macho posturing among young dudes; and the implicit contradictions of a Judeo-Christian society. Neat he’s not: Why would Zach loudly break up with Heather in one scene and be a faithful follower in the next? What happened in between? And the whole resolution—Heather commits an impropriety, and is severely punished for it, though maybe it’s a blessing in disguise—feels somewhat unjustified. But above all else, Gordon is pushing Mrs. Parker’s viewpoint, and it’s a beguiling one: “My religion is knowledge. That’s my church.” A good line among many.
The other Krebses: Mom and Heather’s brother (Zach Rand). Photographs by Russ Rowland.
The score is an odd mix of soft rock and—hey, it’s in the title—gospel. Gordon isn’t the most melodic guy around, and at least a third of his lyrics are obliterated by Sean Hagerty’s blast-everything sound design. (They repeat a lot, though, so if you miss one the first time, you might catch it the second.) But those lyrics are, and this isn’t happening a lot these days, full of ideas.
The set, by Christopher and Justin Swader, is on the skimpy side, as is Rachel Klein’s choreography. She also directs, with rather more face-front-and-declaim than the citizens of Sharonville would probably tolerate. She’s helped by a dynamic cast: Besides Kushnier’s Sean Hannity-like Booker (he also plays a homeless folk singer with a secret), there’s Williams’s distraught, questioning Heather, Stewart’s appealing Zach, and Lagerstam’s Kaisley, who seems to have wandered in from Mean Girls. Jonathan Bauerfeld conducts a lively if overmiked band, and Saawan Tiwari’s costumes are suitably up-to-the-minute.
As is The Gospel According to Heather. It’ll date instantly, but it’s intelligent and fun, and surprisingly biting in its criticisms of this sorry social environment we’re living in. Who’d have expected that from the musicalizer of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma?
Amas Musical Theatre’s The Gospel According to Heather runs through July 16 at Theater 555 (555 W. 42nd. St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday and at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit amasmusical.org.
Book, Lyrics and Music: Paul Gordon
Direction and Choreography: Rachel Klein
Scenic Design: Christopher and Justin Swader
Costume Design: Saawan Tiwari
Lighting Design: Jamie Roderick
Sound Design: Sean Hagerty
