“Saturday Church,” an amped-up Off-Broadway musical adaptation of a 2017 indie movie of the same name, screams Broadway-level ambition. The movie was about a quiet Brooklyn churchgoing teenager named Ulysses who journeys to the West Village and eventually discovers his queer community at a weekly church program for LGBTQ+ youth. In the musical, we are greeted from the get-go by a loud blast of big-name fabulousness: A score of house, gospel and electric music by pop star Sia and Grammy winning DJ Honey Dijon; a libretto co-written by Pulitzer winner James Ijames (Fat Ham); a cast that features Tony winners Joaquina Kalukango and J Harrison Ghee, who as a drag-draped Black Jesus begins the party, shouting: “Are there any queens in the house?” as the entire ensemble struts their stuff to Darrell Grand Moultrie’s hyperkinetic choreography in the opening number.
Many might find the propulsive Ballroom culture and club-tinged musical numbers thrilling, despite – or perhaps because of – their familiarity after years of the TV series “Pose,” and such recent productions as “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” And “Saturday Church” does manage to work in more or less the same story as the movie, albeit with the glittering addition of Black Jesus throughout as Ulysses’ guardian angel. That the musical does not offer similar moments of quiet contemplation as the movie is not something the average theatergoer will know or care about; nobody I talked to at the performance I attended had even seen the film. But to those who do know the movie – or the real-life community that inspired it — the musical can feel like overkill.
On a quiet, nearly empty street in the West Village, there is an unobtrusive red door. This is the backdoor of the St. Luke in the Fields church, through which “marginally housed” young people from the LGBTQ+ community have entered every Saturday afternoon for the past quarter century, to hang out, make art, eat a meal, get free clothes, find support. Eight years ago, Damon Cardasis wrote and directed “Saturday Church” based on his experiences as a volunteer for what’s officially called the Art and Acceptance Program. There are moments in the movie when Cardasis has his characters break into song. But these musical numbers are modest, most of them understood to be taking place in Ulysses’ imagination. More memorable are the realistic scenes that are slow-paced, with a lingering camera, minimal dialogue, underscored by a gentle classically-tinged orchestral music, which implicitly and effectively emphasize the temporal and psychological distance that Ulysses has to travel to accept himself.
The musical (for which Cardasis is credited as co-writer with IJames), runs an hour longer than the movie, but feels speeded up, the details of the characters’ lives glossed over.
Ulysses (portrayed by newcomer Bryson Battle) wants to sing in the choir of his church, but the conservative Pastor Lewis (Ghee again) turns him away, because of his effeminate mannerisms. His well-meaning mother Amara (Kristolyn Lloyd) is supportive, but she is recently widowed and overworked as a night nurse, so he is left under the care – or rather the control — of his Aunt Rose (Kalukango), a religious woman (and rousing soloist in the chorus) who shares the pastor’s antipathy towards the emerging queer identity of her nephew
Riding on the subway (which like much else in David Zinn’s scenic design, is a sleek abstraction), Ulysses happens to sit across from a sexy stranger named Raymond (Jackson Kanawha Perry) who tells him about the community center, which everybody calls Saturday Church.
“It’s a place where people like us can be ourselves,” he tells him.
“I’m not…”
“Oh, you don’t know yet?”
Thinking church is church, Ulysses arrives at Saturday Church in his Sunday finest, which makes him the target of good-natured ribbing by a trio of nurturing and constantly bitching drag queens, led by Ebony (B Noel Thomas) with two sidekicks portrayed by Anania and Caleb Quezon.
As Ulysses works through the tensions and pressures towards the perhaps-inevitable conciliatory hugs and celebratory voguing, the scenes and songs that depict Ulysses’ developing relationship with Raymond feel the most credible and the most endearing. That may be because they seem to come closest to what those kids who walk through the church’s red door each week may actually be like, or at least what they most realistically hope for.
Saturday Church runs through October 19
