Review Roundup: TREVOR: THE MUSICAL at Stage 42- See What the Critics Are Saying!

Jesse Green, The New York Times: The result is a bizarrely cheery and thus tonally incomprehensible show in which everything potentially painful is anesthetized by saccharine songs and middle school clichés. When the very bright lights (by Peter Kaczorowski) rise on Donyale Werle's Lakeview Junior High set, with its colorful linoleum, neat banks of lockers and prominent trophy case, you may feel you are in for an ordinary pubescent comedy along the lines of "Mean Girls." Nothing suggests that Trevor (Holden William Hagelberger) will have anything worse to face in the course of the action than the general failure of the world to recognize his fabulousness.

Adam Feldman, Time Out New York: The familiar Ross hits that punctuate the score, including "Endless Love" and the theme from Mahogany, have the unfortunate effect of upstaging the musical's serviceable original songs, whose tunes are fine delivery systems for the lyrics but rarely catch strong melodic wind. But the singer's appearances, in amusing costumes by Mara Blumenfeld, pump up the nostalgia factor and give the show a valuable lift of fantasy. The production looks great overall, and goes by swiftly; director Marc Bruni and choreographer Josh Prince, who also collaborated on Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, keep everything moving at a rapid clip but give the emotional moments room to land. In the end, despite its painful corners and occasional missteps, Trevor is a joyful show-a show about finding joy enough where you can. It comes out nicely.

Elysa Gardner, New York Stage Review: Librettist/lyricist Dan Collins and composer Julianne Wick Davis have fleshed out Celeste Lecesne's story about a middle-school lad grappling with his sexuality in 1981 suburbia, and turned it into a show that is at once breezily entertaining and genuinely heartwarming. This feat is all the more impressive in light of current tensions concerning issues of sexual orientation and gender. In less intuitive hands-or under direction less adroit than that provided here by Marc Bruni-the results could have seemed preachy, or cloying, or quaint.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Perhaps it could be said in its favor, and as directed by Marc Bruni, Trevor is cute, but when at one point Trevor is called "cute," he replies with some sophistication, "Cute is what delusional moms tell their children."