The 2000 film "Bring it On" was an entertaining teenage cheerleading comedy that looked at the sport with a slightly cynical side eye, through the perspective of Kirsten Dunst's cheerthusiast Torrance, Eliza Dushku's cheerskeptic gymnast Missy and Gabrielle Union's Isis, indignant about how her team's culture had been appropriated by a bunch of white girls. It did well enough to produce six follow-up direct-to-video sequels, all of which feature variations on the same basic setup - cheerleading rivalries and some aspect of street-dance culture infiltrating their world to a greater or lesser extent, and, in 2011, it was adapted to become a stage musical by the team of Tom Kitt and Amanda Green (fresh from the "High Fidelity" musical as a team, Kitt also fresh from getting a Putlizer as composer of "Next to Normal" and recently orchestrating "American Idiot") plus Lin-Manuel Miranda (post "In The Heights", pre "Hamilton"), with a script by Jeff Whitty, following up on "Avenue Q". Weirdly the musical doesn't directly adapt the first movie, instead being kinda a distillation of the general themes of them all into a story of another Cheerthusiast whose dreams of conquering the cheer-world seem to be dashed when redistricting means she's moved to an inner city school with, shock-horror, no cheersquad. If you can't guess that she'll learn lessons in tolerance while creating a new cheersquad with the various diverse underdog types at her new school, congratulations for missing out on 90% of pop culture tropes.
Philo gives this an energetic production with a skilled production team assembling a strong cast to meet the physical, musical and acting demands of the show - Jessica Gowing as our heroine, Campbell, with just the right mix of ruthless determination and charm, Jess Marshall as her no-bullshit counterpart at the new school, Hannah Lance as the seemingly sweet Eva, Katie Lis as the bubbly and enthusiastic Bridget, Ashleigh Maynard as the somewhat accidentally bitchy Skylar, Emma English as the nicely dim Kylar, Diana Caban Velez as the double-act of Nautica and La Cienega, Frank Shanahan as the dopey boyfriend Campbell leaves behind, Grayson Woodham as the brainier boyfriend she picks up along the way, Jeremy Chan as the booty-obsessed Twig, Ash Syme as the too-cool-for-this Cameron and a rich and diverse ensemble of dancers, singers and a few ring-in-cheer-people.
Isaac Gordon directs a tight ship, keeping the show ever flowing, with the assistance of CHarlotte Morphett's razor-tight choreography and Alexander Unikowski's high-energy music direction as the score various from hip-hop to balladry to traditional music theatre narrative ensembles.
This is an energetic, light piece that feels contemporary, lively, and thoroughly entertaining. This is by no means essential viewing but if you're looking for a fun time there's certainly a lot of fun to be had here.
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