"Bring It On: The Musical,' on Broadway

After watching the Olympics on TV for two weeks, I took a night off to go see Bring It On in New York. This new musical about competition between high school cheerleading squads— which these days are strongly into gymnastics— contains many similarities to the Olympics and turned out to be more entertaining.

Unlike Olympics audiences, we theatergoers were spared the unctuous xenophobia of NBC commentators as well as their hyperbolic (and quickly disproven) assurances that Team USA gymnasts couldn't possibly fail to win gold medals. Likewise, we didn't have to sit idly through long stretches of qualifying rounds between the brief exciting moments.

In contrast, Bring It On is constantly involving and spectacular. What's more, every cast member nails his or her landings perfectly.

Bring It On combines a cute story line and dazzling choreography. It's the latest project of Andy Blankenbuehler, a former Broadway dancer whose early effort at choreography was the Frank Wildhorn musical about Zelda Fitzgerald, Waiting for the Moon, which premiered at the Lenape Arts Center in New Jersey in 2005. That show's dance style was Gershwinesque. For Bring It On, Blankenbuehler's style is youthful and contemporary.

Sondheim would cringe

The music is a collaboration between Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of In the Heights) and Tom Kitt (composer of Next to Normal), with lyrics by Miranda (to his own music) and Amanda Green (to Kitt's music). The rhythms are varied, sometimes intricate yet always propulsive. And the words move the story forward while utilizing puns and snatches of urban poetry.

Some of the rhymes ("feminine" with "gentlemen," "swimmin' in women," "precision" with "television") would make a linguistic purist like Stephen Sondheim cringe. But the singers, with rap-like delivery, stress the right syllables to create a sonic landscape.

Under Blankenbuehler's tutelage, all the principals execute high-flying feats beyond what I've ever seen on Broadway. I've enjoyed the "Fab Five" American tumblers in London; but Bring It On offers 20 young people executing gymnastic moves, all at the same time, often while singing. And they're doing it live, not on TV.

Blonde in a black school

The story centers on Campbell, a blonde, lily-white heroine who is about to become head cheerleader at Truman High School when she is redistricted into the predominantly black Jackson High. Eventually Campbell and her new schoolmates will compete against her former friends in a national championship match. Thrust into unwanted and unfamiliar surroundings, Campbell must find her way, as adolescents do: expressing individuality but afraid to challenge group pressure, reluctant to change but knowing she must.

The script by Jeff Whitty (of Avenue Q) pokes fun at the show's situations, avoiding what could have become cloying. The deceptively simple story contains several twists and an unexpected denouement.

Taylor Louderman is the appealing innocent, Kate Rockwell her beautiful-but-shallow bête noir, Adrienne Warren the talented leader of the pack at Jackson High. Elle McLemore is the young Eva, who follows Louderman's footsteps but undermines her— a character who combines Anne Baxter in All About Eve with Kristin Chenoweth's Sally from You're a Good Man Charley Brown and Glinda from Wicked.

Ryann Redmond is memorable as an overweight and clumsy girl who blossoms over the course of one school year and attracts a guy who prefers a little "junk in the trunk." All the supporting players are prodigiously talented.