The Prom

It’s always a wor­ry­ing prospect when a beloved stage show is adapt­ed for the screen – even more so in the wake of Cats. Thank­ful­ly, Ryan Murphy’s The Prom, based on the 2018 Broad­way musi­cal of the same name, is a fab­u­lous spectacle.

The film meets the self-obsessed stars of the Eleanor Roo­sevelt musi­cal on their grand open­ing night. After neg­a­tive reviews threat­en to close the show, the per­form­ers seek a chance for dam­age con­trol pub­lic­i­ty. They find their cause in Emma (Jo Ellen Pell­man), a teenage les­bian from Edge­wa­ter, Indi­ana who tried to bring her girl­friend to prom only for the PTA to refuse and can­cel the entire event. The con­flict is per­son­al, as clos­et­ed Alyssa’s (Ari­ana DeBose) over­bear­ing moth­er, the head of the PTA, doesn’t realise it is her daugh­ter Emma is dating.

From the first ener­getic num­ber, The Prom deliv­ers daz­zling sequin-cov­ered chore­og­ra­phy. In par­tic­u­lar, Emma and Alyssa’s high-school romance is adorable, and the film real­ly sparkles when these two are in the spot­light. If only the focus was on them more often.

Still, no one can blame direc­tor Ryan Mur­phy for want­i­ng to make the most of Meryl Streep’s exu­ber­ant per­for­mance as the nar­cis­sis­tic Dee Dee Allen – a roman­tic sub­plot between her and Kee­gan-Michael Key’s empa­thet­ic, Broad­way-lov­ing prin­ci­pal pro­vides the oppor­tune moment for some glitzy theatrics.

Else­where, Nicole Kidman’s bub­bly Ang­ie is there to com­fort Emma, while proud Juil­liard alum­ni Trent Oliv­er (Andrew Ran­nells) stars in his own flam­boy­ant mall musi­cal. It is only the effer­ves­cent Bar­ry Glick­man that is let down by the cast­ing of James Cor­den. In com­par­i­son to Brooks Ash­man­skas’ por­tray­al, Cor­den feels disin­gen­u­ous, over-empha­sis­ing every camp detail of his character.

On its toes thanks to some snap­py edit­ing, this joy­ous ode to musi­cal the­atre hon­ours the buoy­ant melodies and heart-wrench­ing solos that fans of the Broad­way show cher­ish. Fea­tur­ing every song from the show and with some scenes recre­at­ed word-for-word, the only notable changes come in flesh­ing out a few sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, as well as a lyric change which means Cor­den doesn’t sing the word ​‘d*ke’ (prob­a­bly for the best).

Most enter­tain­ing when the stars set aside their self­ish desires and focus on the bril­liance of Emma and Alyssa, The Prom is a thor­ough­ly enjoy­able cel­e­bra­tion of queer accep­tance, leav­ing you crav­ing the col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence of the theatre.