Review Roundup: CHOIR BOY Opens at Manhattan Theatre Club

Manhattan Theatre Club's American premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney's Choir Boy, the new play featuring gospel music directed by Trip Cullman opens tonight, July 2 at MTC's The Studio at Stage II.

Choir Boy features Nicholas L. Ashe (The Lion King), Kyle Beltran (In The Heights), Grantham Coleman (As You Like It), Tony Award winner Chuck Cooper (The Piano Lesson), Drama Desk Award winner Austin Pendleton(Ivanov), Jeremy Pope (Little Shop of Horrors), and Wallace Smith (American Idiot).

The Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys is dedicated to the creation of strong, ethical black men. Pharus (Jeremy Pope) wants nothing more than to take his rightful place as leader of the school's legendary gospel choir. Can he find his way inside the hallowed halls of this institution if he sings in his own key?

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: As Pharus, Mr. Pope gives a magnetic, moving performance that provides strong emotional ballast...Mr. Pope sings forth his dialogue with the rhythmic bite he also brings to the many spirituals and hymns that are used as the play's connective tissue. All of the actors portraying the schoolboys have terrific voices, and these sequences are among the most pleasurable in the play...Enough minor subplots to fill a season of "Glee" are woven in and out of the simmering central drama about Pharus's vulnerability, although they are mostly underdeveloped...But while it sometimes feels like an Advanced Placement version of an "Afterschool Special," "Choir Boy" transcends its flaws in the affecting and honest portrait it draws of a gay youth tentatively beginning to find the courage to let the truth about himself become known.

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: Believe the buzz. "Choir Boy," the small but mighty coming-of-age play by Tarell Alvin McCraney that melted frosty British hearts at the Royal Court last year, deserves its kudos. An all-American cast captures the bristling tensions at a prestigious prep school for African American boys when a flamboyantly gay youth is named leader of their celebrated gospel choir. Terrific young actor-singers, some barely out of school themselves, not only make angelic choristers, they also pitch themselves into a hot debate on the meaning and value of gospel music. Could this be another "History Boys"? Could be.

Linda Winer, Newsday: "Choir Boy," commissioned by the Manhattan Theatre Club for its new Stage II series, has little of [Tarell Alvin McCraney's] boundary-pushing sensibility or structural sense of adventure...The best parts are the contemporary arrangements of the spirituals, scattered throughout the 90-minute drama. The music says deeper things about harmony than does the dialogue.

Brendan Lemon, Financial Times: A high percentage of recent fiction about gay kids in American high schools revolves around violence, either self-inflicted by the shunned student or perpetrated by brutes. While this new work of McCraney...lands squarely in this tradition, it adds an element generally unexplored: the experience of young men in black private schools. In particular, Pharus, given an appealing performance by Jeremy Pope, feels like a character we've never seen before. McCraney has a continually developing gift for exploring African-American traditions in a contemporary context...When the boys break into a cappella song, any criticisms seem meaningless carping.

Joe Dziemianowicz, Daily News: As in his Off-Broadway shows "Wig Out!" and "The Brother/Sister Plays," McCraney thinks big. "Choir Boy" is his crispest and most confident work. If the school's headmaster is too wishy-washy and naive (and he is), McCraney has seen to it that Pharus is realistically complex. He is by turns manipulative, charming, infuriating and endearing - part underdog, part pitbull and he embodies the traits of a survivor.

Brendan Lemon, Financial Times: When the boys break into a cappella song, any criticisms seem meaningless carping. Old spirituals like "Motherless Child" and "Rainbow Round My Shoulder" acquire new, sometimes unexpected meanings. The harmonies of Choir Boy are close, even as happiness for the boys sometimes feels far away.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

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