Most of us have endured the horror of the school play but we had a particularly flamboyant drama teacher, Mr Crisp, who made some inspired if not frankly bizarre creative choices which came to a head with his version of the musical ‘Oliver!’ where he chose to cast Fagin’s gang of thieves as Thai lady boys that created quite a reaction from the parents on opening night. For some reason the intended run of a week lasted for only a day and Mr Crisp apparently left teaching after that. Whether it was connected to his house mysteriously burning down immediately after is not known. But Theater Camp is that peculiarly American thing (along with an inability to spell ‘theatre’ correctly) where it’s those flamboyant little show offs, who usually got a right kicking behind the sports hall every break time, go during the summer holidays dreaming of acting glory – the reality is usually waiting tables or flipping burgers.
Theater Camp is a faux documentary very much in the style of Christopher Guest (Spinal Tap, Best in Show) and is based on a short film from directors and co-writers Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman.
Ben Platt and Molly Gordon co-starring as Amos and Rebecca-Diane are former campers with dreams of stardom who now return annually as counsellors to the camp where they first started their own acting journey as schoolkids. However this year the running of the camp is different as the beloved founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) had a seizure at one of the kids performances and is in a coma – an effect not dissimilar to that suffered by parents sitting through their child’s school nativity. So heading up the camp is her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) a wannabe business blogger/influencer constantly uploading the sort of half-baked advice that contestants for The Apprentice regard as gospel. With a plethora of kids of varying ability matched only by counsellors who aspire to have even a modicum of ability whatsoever as they work towards the end of term big show – yes almost inevitably it’s that ‘let’s put on a show right here!’ that the film sends up along with the woefully inadequate staff. And against this background the Theater Camp is fighting financial woes and risks being bought out by a better financed, better run, better equipped neighbouring camp.
There’s a decent cast here with several of the children especially impressive but there’s a wealth of really good ideas here which remain undeveloped – a teacher with a shady past and no experience, a class war between the two camps and the kids themselves have several decent back stories. Whereas several of the adult roles are paper thin to the point of transparency and not everyone who works in theatre is gay and this has a preponderance of stereotypically flamboyant gay staff.
With Will Ferrell on board as a producer Theater Camp has a number of very funny moments but this setting has been seen before and better too as this is a patchy affair and even at 90 minutes it stretches the gag.
related feature: Terry Gillian’s brilliant ‘Time Bandits’ – 4K UHD LIMITED EDITION
related feature: The child stars of ‘The Railway Children Return’ tell us who was the naughtiest on set
Here’s the Theater Camp trailer……
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