13 THE MUSICAL


Ventura county teens reveal budding triple-threat talents in Panic! Productions’ exhilarating live staging of Jason Robert Brown’s 13 The Musical at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center.

Brown’s songs and Dan Eilish and Robert Horn’s book follow “just about to turn 13” New Yorker Evan Goldman (Ethan Demitri Daugherty) and his now single mom from metropolitan Manhattan to small-town Indiana where culture shock awaits.

And as if the move (and his parents’ divorce) weren’t already enough to trouble the almost teen, Evan’s bar mitzvah is coming up soon, accompanied by the question of how he’s going to make enough friends in his new, decidedly non-Jewish environment to make this once-in-a-lifetime celebration an event to remember.

A fast new friendship with next-door neighbor Patrice (Mia Akemi Brown) seems to offer promise in the last days of summer, but all bets are off once fall semester starts, particularly since it turns out that bookish Patrice is persona non grata at school and Evan is forced to choose between his only local friend and the popularity that will guarantee him the bar mitzvah of his dreams.

Or at least that’s what Evan discovers on the first day of school when football star Brett (Lucas Panczel), head cheerleader Kendra (Olivia Zenetzis), and Kendra’s bff Lucy (Calista Loter) make it abundantly clear that it’s either them or Patrice, and guess who gets kicked to the curb along with the equally unpopular Archie (Peter Umipig), whose muscular dystrophy makes him as much of an outsider as Patrice.

As Lucy plots to steal Brett from Kendra, Archie dreams of transferring Kendra’s affections from her quarterback boyfriend to him, and Patrice fumes from the sidelines about getting kicked to the curb, Evan discovers more than a few life lessons while singing and dancing along the way.

I fell madly in love with 13 in its Mark Taper Forum world premiere back in 2007, and though its  Broadway transfer the following year saw some of the show’s best songs replaced with mostly inferior substitutes, Version 2.0 (the only one licensed by Musical Theatre International) is still a heck of a lot better than the show’s recent misguided Netflix adaptation.

If nothing else, 13 may well be the only Broadway musical to allow an entire cast of performers just entering their teens to actually play their age, which is why, unlike “junior” versions of Guys and Dolls, The Music Man, or Fiddler On The Roof, audiences won’t have to suspend disbelief where 13 is concerned.

Under Barry Pearl’s lively direction, a stageful of talented kids only a year or two older then those they’re playing sing and dance up a storm on the SVCAC stage, and never more so than when executing one Michelle Elkin-choreographed Hi-NRG production number after another.

Daugherty does engagingly heartfelt work as Evan, Zenetzis delivers the goods as the deservedly popular Kendra, Loter and Panczel could give any movie or TV mean girl or boy a run for their money, and Brett posse Eddie (Oliver Stellan) and Malcolm (Jake McDermott) and Kendra/Lucy acolytes Charlotte (Anna Cardino), Cassie (Lucy Bollier), and Molly (Kirsten Adler) provide terrific support along the way.

Most memorable of all are the featured star turns delivered by Brown’s achingly real (and sensationally voiced) Patrice and Umipeg’s irresistibly likeable Archie, thoroughly convincing in depicting the MD battler’s physical challenges.

Last but not least, ensemble members Sophie Gray, Harrington Gwin, Emerson Julian, Brennan Lewis, Alexa Margolis, Marissa Margolis, Maddie Ragsdale, dance captain Callula Sawyer, and Weston Walker-Pardee display enthusiastic, energetic song-and-dance talent throughout, with musical director Lloyd Cooper conducting the show’s topnotch four-piece band*.

Scenic designer Rei Yamamoto keeps things simple, with projections helping to set the scene, and Ian Kelley’s lighting and Pearl and Paul Panico’s props do precisely what they’re supposed to, allowing Angelique Daugherty’s multitude of middle-school-musical costumes to steal the show where design is concerned.

Madison AiSanaye and Morgan Lavin are assistant choreographers. Paige Loter is scenic painter. Nick Caisse is technical director. Megan Brister is stage manager. Sandra Kuker is publicist.

Whether you’re currently in your teen years, or adolescent angst is decades in your past, 13 The Musical is likely to ring true. Young adult musicals don’t get any more entertaining than this.

*Steve Clift, Ryan Detlefsen, Jake Gibson, Satoshi Kirisawa

Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, 3050 Los Angeles Avenue, Simi Valley.
www.panicproductions.org

–Steven Stanley
September 11, 2022
Photos: Paul Kranmer

 

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