21 CHUMP STREET (Brooklyn Academy of Music)****

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELBGa6-uOhc

Available until: Indefinitely

21 Chump Street is a 14-minute musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose other musical projects include (as you probably know if you like modern musicals), Hamilton and In the Heights.

It’s based on a true story. Justin is a top student in his final year of college when he meets a beautiful, mature transfer student named Naomi, who seems to be interested in him. He’s so besotted, he’ll do anything for her. Even if it’s illegal.

The music is good. There’s nothing on the level of Burn from Hamilton, but it’s catchy, it’s varied and it really suits the onstage action. When the lyrics and story are lighthearted, so is the music. When the story becomes more dramatic, the music echoes that. Lin-Manuel Miranda can do better – I don’t really get the impression he’s invested a lot of time in this – but his instinctive understanding of lyrics and music and the way they fit together is as obvious here as in his more sophisticated works.

There are also some very enjoyable dance sequences. Although the standard is very high and I’m sure it’s all been carefully choreographed, a lot of the dancing seems spontaneous. It really feels like the characters have made the decision to dance, rather than that the actors are doing something the choreographer has taught them because someone has decided there needs to be a dance there.

Anthony Ramos is very likeable as Justin – the character does something very silly which will have repercussions, but he’s a genuinely likeable guy and not one of those annoying characters whom you just can’t accept as someone who’s intelligent enough to be a top student.

I was suspicious of Lindsay Mendez’s Naomi right from the start. I doubt that was down to any particular intelligence on my part. It was probably because she’s in a musical which I’m watching and I’m expecting some sort of drama and she seemed the obvious source of it. But I didn’t feel the story was in any way obvious and we were let in on Naomi’s motives quite early on anyway so it didn’t spoil the story.

There was a lot of humour in this story and – although it’s impossible to be sure – the studio audience seemed to accept the story as a romantic comedy gone wrong. I think it’s a very good story, but although it has some humorous lines, I feel it’s a long way from being a comedy. The events of the play are actually really terrible. I think this musical is particularly relevant at the moment. It says a lot about the freedom which people have and ways in which that freedom can be abused and how some people can be vulnerable, even when you don’t necessarily expect them to be.

The music is great and the main characters are strongly-written and performed, but I do feel there is enough in this story for it to have been a full-length musical. I think the reason why it’s so short was because it was originally written as one of several short pieces of theatre, music and drama, all based on real news stories and presented together at one show. But 21 Chump Street has so much in it already and so much which can be added to, particularly considering recent events, it would be really interesting to see it developed into a full-length musical the future – and particularly to see if changes are made considering the awareness a lot of have gained since its 2017 premiere.