Off-B'way Reviews: Saturday Church; House of McQueen; Jamie Allan's Amaze!

J. Harrison Ghee and Bryson Battle in
Saturday Church.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

While it feels a bit like an Afterschool TV Special, Saturday Church, the new Off-Broadway musical celebrating LGBTQ youth, is fun, infectious, and lively, and could very well follow the path of Rent, another New York Theater Workshop production, and make a Broadway transfer. The story is achingly familiar, but there is so much joy here, the predicability of the plot really doesn’t matter.

Based on the 2017 independent film with a cliched but compassionate book by the film’s screenwriter Damon Cardasis and Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames (Fat Ham), Saturday Church employs the tried and true trope of an alienated outsider kid finding self-acceptance and community and delivers enough zest and zip to overcome its flaws. African-American teen Ulysses (a vibrant Bryson Battle) longs to join his church choir, but his starchy Aunt Rose (intense Joaquina Kalukango) forbids it, claiming his flamboyant mannerisms are “too much” for the congregation. At home, Ulysses is dealing with the recent death of his loving dad and the frequent absence of his hard-working mom Amara (tender, conflicted Kristolyn Lloyd), struggling to make ends meet as a nurse. 

In a parallel story, Ebony (a sizzling and buoyant B Noel Thomas) is grieving the suicide of her friend Sasha and feeling overwhelmed as the organizer of Saturday Church, a weekly gathering for trans and gay youth who are experiencing little if any family support. Serving as a sort of supernatural narrator is Black Jesus (played with sparkling panache by J. Harrison Ghee), a fabulous non-binary deity figure. In a clever case of double casting, Ghee also plays the conservative pastor of Ulysses’ church. Ghee was so convincing in both roles, I didn’t realize it was the same performer until the intermission when I checked the program.