The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: NYTW’s Saturday Church
By Ross
In one of its most radiant “preach to us” moments, Saturday Church rises up in a blast of light and love, urging us to feel the power of acceptance with open hearts. Designer Adam Honoré (Off-Broadway’s We Are Your Robots) floods the stage with a brilliance that feels equal parts sanctuary and nightclub, igniting New York Theatre Workshop with a surge of gospel-infused electricity.
The effect is intoxicating, joy-soaked, and a gloriously unapologetic wonderment of high-heeled riches, taking me back to those iconic gifted red stilettos from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, but with a deeper reach into our souls. Yet this unwrapping rises up with music, movement, and faith to intermingle in ways that gloriously save us, challenge us, and bring us to tears, often all at once.
But it’s no surprise, even if the plot remix is somewhat well-worn and known. Saturday Church brings forth that love and acceptance in fabulous gospel tones, unpacking deep emotional conflicts within religion, church, gender expression, sexuality, and a lead character who identifies somewhere in the LGBTQIA+ community. Where exactly? Well, that’s not so clear, I’m sorry to say, but Saturday Church doesn’t shy away from going to battle against a strong familial love that unmercifully crumbles hard under hate and prejudice.
Based on the movie musical of the same name, Saturday Church, co-written by playwright James Ijames, who delivered unto us the brilliant Fat Ham, and one of the original film‘s writers, Damon Cardasis, dynamically unfolds into two parts and two parallel worlds; one about the young Ulysses, authentically and cleverly embodied by Bryson Battle (“The Voice“), who is continually asked by his loving, but ultra-religious aunt, to tone all that flamboyance down, and fit in (code phrase for ‘stop acting so gay!’). The other is about a different kind of maternal presence, the worn-out pseudo-mother hen, Ebony, delivering epic gloriousness by B Noel Thomas (London’s SuperYou). Ebony is finding it difficult to continue to lead the loving LGBTQIA+ group, Saturday Church, and is desperate to hand it off. Both are struggling with a loss of faith, brought on by the unsupportive heaviness of loss and disillusionment. And both are looking for salvation or direction in different ways and means.
Up front, Ulysses’ story registers solidly with pretty much anyone who has ever felt alone and unloved due to ‘otherness’ and exclusion. He is spiralling hard and in isolation, trying to balance the expectations of his family after the death of his father, and the pressure of fitting in at his aunt’s church. His Aunt Rose, solidly portrayed by Joaquina Kalukango (Broadway’s Paradise Square), living somewhere inside some very stereotypical constructs, won’t let him sing in the church choir because he’s “too much“. Don’t draw so much attention to yourself, she tells him, cruelly informing him that, as is, he is unworthy and an embarrassment. Doubling down on that heartless homophobia is their Pastor (J. Harrison Ghee), who tells him, with some level of awkward compassion, to tone down his exuberance so everyone in the congregation can feel more “comfortable“. Wisely, but with honest empathetic confusion, he answers, “Except me?”
It’s one of the most striking, carefully constructed interactions that made the audience gasp and call it all out, loud and proud, like they were in their very own Sunday Church. It’s in those precious moments of universal connection that Saturday Church rises up to the heavens, elevating the genre into its own brand of gospel and love. All in the audience can feel his pain, regardless of your background or your religious upbringing, and that is both evident and powerful. We care for this young man, like we do for the lost Ebony, as we watch them both start to falter against the crush of self-doubt and grief.
With Ulysses, it’s the bullying and the battering that he has to cope with, and with Ebony, it’s the grief she is experiencing after losing the mentor who gave her the drive to rise up and keep pushing. And it’s that overwhelming grief that makes her want to hand off the responsibilities of Saturday Church to others, namely Heaven (Anania) and Dijon (Caleb Quezon), de-gorgeous and delightful as all can be. She says she needs to spend some time finding her own sense of meaning again, yet that side-plot doesn’t really feel real or important enough. It should be as important as Ulysses’ complex state of being, but unfortunately, Ebony’s meltdown doesn’t resonate as strongly. It all feels a bit manufactured and abrupt, as it casually flips from joyful bliss to dismay in a snap, brought on by one fabulous number, yet ends with a single bad-timed line from a character (Caleb Quezon) who sometimes doesn’t think before she speaks.
Ebony’s crisis may not land with the weight it deserves, but it still sets the stage for the arrival of another kind of salvation. Just as despair threatens to pull the story down, in sweeps Black Jesus — flamboyant, fabulous, and utterly irresistible — to lift Ulysses (and the audience) back up. In the glittery-gowned gift that is J. Harrison Ghee (Broadway’s Some Like it Hot), this heavenly creation guides us through like a holy fairy godmother, narrating and pushing the lost Ulysses in the most charismatic of ways. Hanging around in the background heavens, like many do, Ghee delivers the deity deliciously, and we haven’t even started talking about the singing and the music yet.
In this heavenly framing, the songs are all magnificently divine, and I’m not being overly complimentary. They each fill the theatre with the awe-inspiring glory, so much so that we quickly toss away any reservations about any of the muddled plot points and the stereotypical structuring. The pseudo-juke-box music by Sia (with additional music by Honey Dijon and additional lyrics by Cardasis and Ijames), which my plus one clocked without even looking at the program notes, sings out with emotional resonance and relevance in the most rapturous way possible. The variety of voices is perfectly matched and crafted for ultimate communion and clarity, elevating Saturday Church every time any character shifts into song and dance, thanks to the dynamic choreography of Darrell Grand Moultrie (MCC’s Space Dogs) and musical supervision, arrangements, and orchestrations by Jason Michael Webb and Luke Solomon, and the overall effect is astonishing.
Battle has the most delectable voice on that stage, even if his character development isn’t exactly as clear-cut and defined as we would like. His singing is beyond powerful, especially when paired with the youthful love and desire he reveals for and with Raymond, embodied beautifully by Jackson Kanawha Perry (The Karate Kid the Musical), with their phenomenal duet, “House on Fire.” This number, played out lovingly on the killer versatile set designed by David Zinn (Broadway’s SpongeBob…), is delivered out so caringly, with dancers echoing the physicalization of the flirty texts being sent back and forth between these two lovebirds. Thomas, as Ebony, dressed dynamically and powerfully by Qween Jean (PAC NYC’s Cats – The Jellicle Ball), also shines with glory, giving it her all with “Nothing to Lose,” and finding all that fevered flavour with her gang in the high-tempo “I’m That Girl on the Dance Floor.”
I’ve never really seen a musical that had, literally, every single song hit so solidly, starting with the joyful “Sunday“, which showed us the glory of Battle’s Ulysses, and also what was making the Aunt so uncomfortable. Yet, there is an oddness and disconnect with the structural role of mom, played carefully by Kristolyn Lloyd (ATC’s Blue Ridge), that is essentially shoved to the side in a way that I hear doesn’t happen in the film version. I won’t really compare, as I’ve never seen the film, but I did notice she was barely present as a force to be engaged with in the stage musical. Always rushing in and running out, as directed by Whitney White (Roundabout’s Liberation), her acceptance of her child was never really given space to breathe, and she barely registered as a support system against the tyranny of the oppressive Aunt. It’s a fine construct, but then to make her such an integral part of the closing felt like a forced feel-good formula from an edited-down version of the show that wasn’t on display here.
Strutting out like they’ve got nothing to lose, the seriously stunning act two opener, “It’s a Queen Thing,” is another gigantic Ghee moment that in any other musical would be the highlight, but here, in the magical and topical Saturday Church, it is just another fantastic moment, one of so many that it’s almost difficult to explain. Director White has done a phenomenal job moving this divine intervention through its powerful musical paces, never letting it pause enough for the small, tiny, weeny cracks in plot and character development to show or bother us.
As the United States hatefully spins and tears itself apart over questions of diversity, equality, and inclusion, politicized and demonized to such a high degree, Saturday Church feels less like entertainment and more like a rousing testimony. It preaches love in the face of hate, joy in the face of oppression. Director Whitney White and her extraordinary company have built something that demands to be heard and embraced. And it needs to dance and sing long into the night for as long as it can. Defiant, brave, and gloriously alive, Saturday Church is proof that the best sermon comes not from the pulpit, but from a stage filled with voices that refuse to be silenced. And it’s the best place in town to feel the love, on any night of the week.
