Today, I am a ... musical?
It was actually 2008 when composer Jason Robert Brown bravely went out on a wing and a tefillah (prayer) by scripting the score for a Broadway musical about a Bar Mitzvah boy battling the vagaries of becoming a man and a social outsider at the same time. It was all part of turning “13,” the traditional, if trying, age of passage for a Jewish pisher to pass over into manhood.
Brown was abetted by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, who wrote the book about young Evan, dislocated to Indiana from New York due to his parents’ divorce, and having a mid-kid crisis adjusting to the Midwest.
From new teen to Newtown, “13,” and its cast of 26, will spin this yarn of yarmulkes and youthful yearning, adolescent adrenaline and anxiety, as the Newtown Arts Company (newtownartscompany.com) offers a spread of ageless wit and wisdom on stage at the Newtown Theatre from Aug. 3 to Aug. 6.
It is all about raising the bar for boys bracing for their first bout with braces and bragging rights of manhood even as parental guidance meets resistance to the real-life label of PG-13.
“It’s a great show with a good message about friendship,” said Morgaine Ford-Workman, who should know: As the musical’s director and choreographer, it is her job to gently jab at the foibles that unfailingly frustrate youngsters eager to fast-forward their biological and chronological clocks to adulthood.
It all clicks onstage as youngsters in middle school “learn how to deal with cliques and with kids they don’t get along with.”
That’s a daily dilemma Evan deals with in his life, noted Ford-Workman, who herself seems to be having the time of her life directing the young cast onstage, showing how kids plod along in a plot “dealing with having braces, having that first kiss and going through other milestones.” It is all about a caste system of “the cool kids and the not-so-cool kids.”
Ford-Workman, who is a familiar face in the area for her theater work, can identify with Evan: “When I was 13, I moved to Pennsylvania from Florida, and had a similar situation to Evan’s. I went from the suburbs of Orlando to New Tripoli, where there were cornfields in every direction, and kids drove tractors to school.”
From Disney World to the dizzying differences of farmland life, the Morrisville resident remembers it got better when she “found my people with a band and a theater group.”
The group on the Newtown stage doesn’t have to deal with cornfields, but there are other mazes that come into play.
“A lot of my close friends have helped, as have a number of cast members, with the Hebrew prayers” in the show, said Ford-Workman.
A member of the in-crowd or crowded out to the edges, looking in: Where does Andrew Loudon fit in? At 15, the community theater veteran, a rising freshman at Council Rock High School, rises to the occasion as Evan. Cool? Uncool? “I’m in the middle,” he said.
And being in the midst of all the action onstage, the promising youngster had some initial trepidation.
“At first I was concerned with all the Hebrew I had to sing,” noted Loudon, a member of the youth choir at Newtown Presbyterian Church. But he gained insight from “talking to my friend about his own Bar Mitzvah.”
As Evan is beaming from the bimah, he views a variety of sectarian groups sitting before him. Noted Ford-Workman, “We are inclusive, and have a wide range of ethnicities” and genders working the show, with kids from all over Bucks County taking part.
Part of why he’s especially proud to have a part in this production, said Loudon, is “that I have learned a lot, especially to be grateful for what I have, which includes amazing great friends.”
And to chill out about not being cool. “I couldn’t have been a cool kid — so much pressure — but I like where I am,” he said.
As does Ford-Workman enjoy the show where it is at this point. She has a good laugh recalling some of the pressure points associated with a cast of kids dealing with delicate social dilemmas. “It was hard to get all the giggles out,” she chuckled about some young actors who didn’t embrace the need for kissing so cooly.
“No matter how old you are, kissing on stage can be uncomfortable,” reasoned the director. “We worked those scenes tirelessly.”
The show doesn’t offer mere lip service to problems associated with growing up or adulthood itself.
“It’s a funny story for all ages,” said Loudon, with his director adding, “We want the adults in the audience to be taken back to their childhood.”
Is 13 a lucky charm in Loudon’s life? “Two years ago, when I turned 13, I was superstitious about the number,” said the young actor.
“Not anymore,” said Loudon, loud and clear with pride in the good fortune he feels he has of being part of “13.”
Michael Elkin is a playwright, theater critic and novelist who lives in Abington. He writes occasional columns about theater and the arts.
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