[NEohioPAL] Review of "Bring It On" at the Beck Center for the Arts

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Beck’s ‘Bring It On’ offers cheer-face and style over substance 



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



It has been suggested by experts like Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director at New York City’s Public Theater, that Lin-Manuel Miranda – who penned the Tony Award-winning musicals “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” – may be the next Shakespeare.



Miranda has, at a very young age, demonstrated incredible productivity, extraordinary popularity and a proclivity for turning the language of the people – in his case, hip-hop and rap – into heightened verse.  



Teen-spirit and up-beat cheer-face aside, Miranda’s “Bring It On” is very much the equivalent of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline.” Both are lesser works with fleeting moments of art amidst a preponderance of artifice.  And both are geared more for the people in the cheap seats seeking entertainment than those in the royal boxes seeking enlightenment.



But thanks to a talent pool drawn from Baldwin Wallace University's Music Theatre Program, this Beck Center for the Arts production rises well above the source material.  



For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.
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