“The seventh and eighth grades were for me, and for every good and single interesting person I’ve ever known, what the writers of the Bible meant when they used the words hell and the pit. Seventh and eighth grades were a place into which one descended. One descended from the relative safety and wildness and bigness one felt in sixth grade, eleven years old. Then the worm turned, and it was all over for any small feeling that one was essentially all right. One wasn’t. One was no longer just some kid. One was suddenly a Diane Arbus character. It was springtime, for Hitler, and Germany.”
-Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions
I can’t read Lamott’s spot-on description of the seventh and eighth grades without getting that heebie-jeebie feeling that someone has just walked over my grave. In one simple, cringe-inducing paragraph, she perfectly nails the horror so peculiar to those years. The same cannot be said of the new musical, “13”, which opened this month at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, although in its defense: a) its target audience might not be a 37-year old mother of toddlers (despite the fact that its composer and lyricist, Jason Robert Brown, best known for “Parade” and “The Last Five Years,” is 38 years old and the father of a toddler) and b) its intent may not have been to dredge up particularly painful memories of the ‘tween (although that term had not even been coined when I was that age) years.
Evan (an earnest and likable Graham Phillips) is about to turn 13 and his world is falling apart. His dad left his mom for a stewardess and now his mom is moving him from the security of his Upper West Side enclave to Appleton, Indiana, touted as “the lamest place in the world” by one of the show’s songs. To make matters even worse, all of this has happened on the eve of what Evan calls the “Jewish Superbowl”—his bar mitzvah. How in the world will he ever get all of the cool kids at his new junior high to come to The Most Important Event of His Life when he’s not only the new kid in town, but also the first Jewish person any of them have ever met?
Things start looking up for Evan when he meets Patrice (singing powerhouse Allie Trimm) and they hit it off splendidly—until school starts, that is, and Evan learns that he must choose between his new friend, who just happens to be the biggest geek in school, and being part of the in crowd. The leaders of the pack at his new junior high are Brett (Eric M. Nelsen), a shaggy blond skater dude and football player who apparently was cutting class the day they handed out brains, Kendra (Delaney Moro), the willowy, virginal cheerleader after whom Brett lusts and who evokes images of Jennie Garth as Kelly Taylor in the original “Beverly Hills 90210” (but I date myself here), and Kendra’s queen bee mean girl BFF, Lucy (Elizabeth Egan Gillies).
Evan, single-mindedly focused on throwing the best bar mitzvah ever at any cost, initially ditches Patrice and panders to the popular crowd. After a series of mishaps involving a slasher movie, an unexpected kiss, and a show-down at the Dairy Queen, however, he has a rare moment of clarity for a 13-year old and realizes how much he wants to make things right with Patrice–and what a complete bunch of morons the popular clique really is.
Both the show’s rock band and the 13-member cast are all bona fide teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 15, with one lone 17-year-old thrown in—quite refreshing in this age of 26-year-olds cast to play budding adolescents. Aside from the all-teen cast, though, there’s nothing else that really sets this show apart. “13” will not make you laugh until you have tears running down your face like the irreverent “Avenue Q” nor does it pack the emotional punch of the innovative “Spring Awakening,” two Tony-award-winning coming-of-age shows also currently on Broadway. It is not a show for the 30-something set—or probably any age group outside of its own cast’s age range—but if you’re looking for some age-appropriate entertainment for your ‘tween, this simple, sweet, and mildly entertaining fare—a sort of Broadway version of “High School Musical”–may be just the thing.
-Jennifer Lehner
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