EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND — People travel from all over to be a part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I chose to attend Banned! The Músical because it originated in Aurora, Colorado. Since we are currently in the United Kingdom and I am a Utah Theatre Blogger, I figured I should go support my neighbors.
Written by April Alsup, the show is billed as a group of gender queer misfits who are in a support group together and also preparing to be in a theatre festival. Directed by Kelly McAllister, this musical has a lot of heart and some really great songs all wrapped up in a pretty fun story.
The main story follows Ana, played by Eli Harvey, who is attending a group at the Gender Identity Center, which is full of many different people who are going through different situations. There is Denise, played by Tracy Denver, who is struggling with her husbands new behaviors that she does not understand, Star Ilalaole as Luna, one of those drag queens people in the news seem to want to make people afraid of, and several other characters all coming together to talk about their challenges and work on writing a show to take to a Fringe Festival.
The story of writing a show for a festival seemed a bit cliche, but what else can you do with a 60 minute time frame? I think I would have preferred taking that plot line out and just focusing instead on the relationships, the discussions in the support group, and the songs.
The songs by Alsup and the piano playing by Alsup was honestly the greatest part of the show. Blake Nawa’a as music supervisor and Heatherwestenkow as choreographer pulled together the ensemble with some truly impressive songs. I was highly entertained by the harmonies, humor, and messaging of the song The World Wide Web, where the cast is talking about how we can be whoever we want to be on the web, yet how that is a double edged sword because we are hiding who we are when we are pretending about who we are. The choreography added to the energy of the show, and the whole cast had fantastic vocals.
Much of the show focused on allowing people to express their gender and sexuality as they see fit, but I also appreciated the genuineness of the struggle, and helping the characters face that struggle. The show used the term organized confusions, and I felt that was an apt way to describe that we as humans do not always know or understand who we are or what we want, and that is ok. I appreciate the writing of Aslup and how they are trying to make a fully more inclusive community with their show. I hope that as they continue to polish this show, they focus on the relationships within the characters like Denise and her husband Ron, played by Mark McAllister, and how they can work through the tensions in their relationship. I also felt like the comments made by Nawa’a as his character Carl toward Ana, a transgender character, were addressed for the bias that they showed, however I wanted to go more in depth to see the change and importance of learning that Carl needed to go through. Again, understanding the time limits of Fringe, Banned! Feels like it needs to be a full length show for the story to be what it is meant to be.
