The Art of Criticism
Photos courtesy of Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles
Catie? Hey, it's me, Carrie. Guess what? My parents just took me to see this musical called 13 at the Taper Forum.
It was SO. TOTALLY. COOL. It’s about this boy who’s totally hot, and he’s Jewish, and he has to move to Indiana cuz his parents are divorced and so he has to have a bar mitzvah and the other kids call it a Bon Jovi and ... yeah, isn’t that funny? ... Anyway, and so he has to convince the other kids to come to his bar mitzvah so he tries to get them into some kind of horror movie and...well, it doesn’t really matter, there’s some other stuff that happens.
But the cool part is that there’s all these great songs where everybody sings, and it’s all about inviting the crippled kids to your party and stuff. I don’t know, it wasn’t like American Pie kind of funny, but it was definitely funny. Like, there was this part where the Jewish kid came out and laid down in some old ladies’ laps, and they gave out pom-poms and made everybody do a cheer like at a football game.
And what was cool was that it was all kids doing everything, even playing in the band, which was up above the stage on this platform. The black kid had a weird voice that was kind of squeaky, but he was funny and hot; and the nerd girl sounded like Sarah McLachlan or something, she was great.
My mom said she thought it was like a lot of other plays, and then my dad said it was predictable and kinda like going to Disneyland — but they always say things like that. I haven’t seen those other plays, and the plays my mom likes are all about serious stuff anyway. BO-RING! I mean, the cheerleader wrote a song for the crippled kid and then kissed him, and that’s not what really happens in real life — so how could my dad predict that? Hello!
Joe Nickell is the arts and entertainment reporter at the Missoulian. He is a two-time NEA arts journalism institute fellow, and edits a blog about Art in the American Outback at http://art.rox.com. He is also co-producer of J & B on the Rox (http://rox.com), the first television series ever broadcast on the Internet. He can be reached at jnickell@missoulian.com.