The­ater Camp review – slight­ly cliquey thesp fest

‘Mom, Dad…I’m a thes­pi­an!’ reads Rebecca-Diane’s bumper stick­er in The­ater Camp, an ensem­ble pro­duc­tion direct­ed by Mol­ly Gor­don (pulling dou­ble duty as an actor too) and Nick Lieber­man, who wrote the film along with lead actors Noah Galvin and Ben Platt. That unabashed­ly cheesy phrase ges­tures at the wel­com­ing queer­ness of the the­atre – its place as an oasis for flam­boy­ant mis­fits. Alas, there’s some­thing ill-fit­ting­ly exclu­sive about The­ater Camp.

Loose­ly a mock­u­men­tary but with no vis­i­ble crew, nar­ra­tion or talk­ing heads, just occa­sion­al explana­to­ry text – the film fol­lows the eccen­tric teach­ers and stu­dents of Adiron­dACTS, a the­atre camp in upstate New York built on card­board and chutz­pah. When camp leader Joan (played all too fleet­ing­ly by Amy Sedaris) is struck down by a coma trig­gered by strobe light­ing at a school per­for­mance of Bye Bye Birdie, her clue­less finance bro son Troy (Jim­my Tatro) takes the reins. With bank­rupt­cy loom­ing, Troy must attempt to keep the ship afloat whilst the camp’s mot­ley crew work on a musi­cal of Joan’s life story.

The kids are win­ning­ly brazen and fun to watch – par­tic­u­lar­ly Alan Kim (who stole hearts in Minari), who plays Alan, a tiny bureau­crat deter­mined to become an agent, with great panache. The teach­ers, how­ev­er, are the focus. Rebec­ca-Diane (Gor­don) and Amos (Platt) are bick­er­ing best friends (by way of char­ac­ter, the for­mer is into the occult and the lat­ter wears scarves and broods), alum­ni of the camp who nev­er left.

They have grown fear­ful that they teach because they can­not do – that proverb haunts places of edu­ca­tion and is explored here with a strange mix­ture of pathos and goofi­ness. Glenn (Galvin), a stage­hand tech wiz­ard who secret­ly sings and dances, is also hes­i­tant about his poten­tial but com­mu­ni­cates his con­tra­dic­tions with more sub­tle­ty. Mean­while, dance teacher Clive (Nathan Lee Gra­ham) and one-man wardrobe depart­ment Gigi (Owen Thiele) are less over­wrought stal­warts of sass, ful­ly inhab­it­ing their roles as fab­u­lous­ly dement­ed men­tors. Ayo Ede­biri appears as Joan – a stage com­bat teacher who lied on her CV – and her con­fu­sion about the cul­ty clan she’s just joined pro­vides some wel­come ground­ed­ness as she baulks at the fre­quent invo­ca­tions of Joan’s spirit.

The­ater Camp has been cre­at­ed by a close-knit troupe who have worked exten­sive­ly with one anoth­er, sev­er­al of whom actu­al­ly met as chil­dren at a the­atre camp – footage of per­for­mances from Gor­don and Platt as kids is includ­ed in the film. Years in the mak­ing, but shot in 19 days and fre­quent­ly impro­vised, it con­tains an effer­ves­cent com­bi­na­tion of haste, impas­sioned nos­tal­gia, and gen­uine affec­tion between cast and crew. Going full method is to be com­mend­ed, but the result is a back-slap­ping sesh that for­gets its satir­i­cal inten­tions some­where along the way. It gives a key­hole view into a glit­tery micro­cosm, a world of sum­mer and sol­i­dar­i­ty – one which might seem mad­den­ing­ly idyl­lic to audi­ences from lands with­out a cul­ture of sum­mer camps, who had less enthu­si­as­tic extra-cur­ric­u­lar child­hoods. The­ater Camp thinks itself gen­er­ous for relat­ing its in-jokes in front of you, but doesn’t seem to give a damn whether you get them or not. You had to be there.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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