(OUTscene NW) RE-view: What does 'It gets better' need? A Movie Musical!

Jimmy Nguyen

by MK Scott

A few weeks back, I posted coverage from the LA premiere of the National Tour of 'It Gets Better' the Musical, and since then they have been traveling to Middle America (Even Kansas)  and back and we were lucky enough for the final stop to be the Hometown of the It Gets Better founders, Dan Savage and Terry Miller.

The production was written/directed by Liesel Reinhart with members of the Gay Men's Chorus of LA as well as few chosen from a Nation wide search. The 6 person cast was diverse and came from different backgrounds.


At the beginning, Actor, Tyler Houston, introduced himself, upon being the character of CJ, a 16 year old gay teen, in a very rural and Conservative town, who has been bullied and is not identifying with any of the It Gets Better videos he is watching online.

When He comes across one video of a Gay couple, Chris and Anson (Jason Currie and Drew Tablak) who are arguing about their own problems, they both appear in CJ's Bedroom. One by one more of the people from the online videos come to life. One being a fierce-talking drag queen, Tootsie (Mario Mosely), the amazing, Gym Bunny; Mikey D. (Sacha Sacket) and Conservative radio host, Thadd (Tod Macofsky). Each of them don't the know the seriousness of CJ's issues until they find the suicide note. Ouch, This is a Reality.

The Music is a wide range pop hits, sang to perfection, including 'Crazy', 'Turn Back Time', 'What doesn't Kill', 'Beautiful', 'At 17', and so on. The 3 songs written by cast member, Sacket, were incredible, especially Houston's rendition of 'It Gets Better' and Sacket who broke character, to tell the story of Jamey, a teen that was bullied and ended his life and honored him with the 'Song for Jamey'.



When Tablak, broke character, he told his story of coming out and still loving Christ, he went to a religious college and even joined an ex-gay group. His dream was to be himself and singing christian music across the country, with It Gets Better he got his wish and belted out Phillip Bliss' "It is well with my soul".
 

For "You have more Friends than you know", the cast was joined by members of the UW Chorale (In LA it was the GMCLA). This was a mixed group so it could include some female voices.

The wide range of characters and personalities were very funny and the voices were top notch. I was reminded a cross between Naked Boys Singing and Rent, and could see the potential for a Film version of this to come in the future. Both the Story and Music intertwined would work well for a Global audience.

"it gets better" is a music and theater production aimed at energizing community awareness and support around the issues of bullying and harassment. www.itgetsbettertour.org .