Review: Theater Kids Rule the School in the World Premiere of ‘Senior Class’
The new musical playing at Olney Theatre Center offers a fresh riff on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion that plays like a love letter to the stage.
By D.R. Lewis
May 28, 2025
This review originally appeared in Washington City Paper.
War, plague, or rapture be damned, there is nothing more important to a senior theater student than securing their shining moment in the spring musical (musicale for the Ms. Darbus stans). In the case of Colin Crosby—the aspiring JEGOT (the “J” is a Jimmy Award, naturally) who lords over the Manhattan School’s theater program with an iron jazz-hand—the cancellation of My Fair Lady due to budget cuts is an insult unlike any other and an existential trauma tantamount to the day the dinosaurs met the asteroid. But if the slew of high school musical stories that precede and inform Senior Class, a world premiere musical running at Olney Theatre Center through June 22, have taught us anything, it’s that show people will go to any length to bring up the curtain. So up it goes, rather gloriously, on this new work that offers a fresh riff on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion by infusing the classic play with many of the beloved tropes found in kindred pieces like Fame, Glee, The Prom and, of course, High School Musical.
As Colin (Bradley Adam Stein, perfectly cast) and his piano prodigy best friend, G.B. (a silver-voiced Jeffrey Cornelius), resolve to adapt Shaw’s play themselves (into, hilariously, My Leading Lady: A New Pygmalion with a Preface and a Sequel) and stage it to preserve Colin’s shot at the Jimmy, they must push aside their snobbish sensibilities and enlist classmate Alizé (Lauryn Adams, a first-rate singer and dancer) and her cohort of “downtown” friends to fill out the cast. The catch? She gets to choreograph and have a say in casting, to Colin’s chagrin. As G.B. becomes quickly smitten with Alizé, the musical slides easily and satisfyingly into a recognizable showbiz story that juggles the pressures of feelings, friends, and fame (at least if Colin has anything to say about it). But in all its silliness, Senior Class stays true to Shaw’s reputation for social comment, forcing the teens to confront questions of classism, racial stereotyping, and dignifying the artistic talents of others. What results is functionally a love letter to the power of making art together, especially in those formative years when playing someone else can help us learn who we are most profoundly, and an awfully fun night at the theater.
Senior Class, based on a concept by producer Kevin Duda, is mostly the work of Melvin Tunstall III, who contributes the book, music, and lyrics, and Greg Dean Borowsky, who is responsible for music and vocal arrangements. Blending styles to create a diverse, distinctive score that oscillates between hip-hop and traditional show music, Tunstall, Borowsky, and orchestrator Sam Young use music to illustrate the divide between the polarized characters and their eventual coming together, plus G.B.’s own unique voice as the composer of a show-within-a-show. The score is challenging and, in the hands (mouths?) of the ensemble, beautifully sung, even if the orchestral mix in the theater is overpowering and muddy.
With choreographer Karla Puno Garcia, director Amy Anders Corcoran has staged an electric opening number for Alizé and her friends, “Wanna Get Down,” on a New York City subway car (Lawrence E. Moten III designs the school and city sets, dressed up with wonderful theatrical easter eggs like a meme photo of Idina Menzel in Wicked), which is followed immediately by a textbook show tune “Colin Takes the Stage.” G.B. works quickly to close the gap between his classmates starting with “Together, We,” and though the musical styles converge toward a guitar-centered closing number, we never lose the characters in their blended new sound.
Even so, Senior Class’ report card shows some room for improvement. The top of each act is heavy on exposition and the dialogue—especially for Alizé—is at times stilted, heavy-handed, and repetitive. There are also a few too many convenient coincidences, like GB’s opera superstar mother Marva (Taylor J. Washington expertly performs a beautiful, if not dramatically necessary, number) having access to the Juilliard costume closet (costume designer Kendra Rai’s opportunity to shine). And a few loose ends, including a surprising, but ultimately unearned romance, still need to be sorted out. Did I hear something about an egg donor?
Maybe those issues—which are, admittedly, quibbles—are the byproduct of a developing show in its first public outing. But I suspect they’re more an issue of trust, or lack thereof, in the audience’s ability to decipher Tunstall’s intricate, albeit skillfully crafted world. If that’s the case, the mistrust is misplaced. There’s a reason storytellers and audiences return to the comfort of archetypes (there are plenty in Senior Class), but Tunstall has rightfully used those only as a foundation on which to create distinct, nuanced characters (with great credit to the cast and Corcoran for fleshing out their distinct identities off the page, too). They needn’t tell the audience who they are; they do a plenty good job showing us.
But Tunstall’s uneasiness seems to extend beyond the individual characters. The infusion of ultracurrent slang (“gagged” and “dead-ass,” I feel ancient even typing them!) seems to be a blatant attempt to signal to the audience that he has done something too few writers who craft teen characters actually do: listen to them. That’s all well and good—and it is refreshing to see a show about teenagers performed by actors who actually look the age they’re playing—but Senior Class has too many timeless truths and too much potential for long life to tie itself to slang that will probably sound dated by the next production. Perhaps Tunstall would do well to take the West Side Story approach and develop his own lexicon, or just toss it altogether. The exception? Tiny’s (Wynter Nicole Cook, outstanding) star turn in “Not Bloody Likely (A Victorian Slang-Banger).” A banger, indeed.
And Tiny’s turn encapsulates what is perhaps most special about Senior Class, and why it could very well become a reliable workhorse for teen theater programs far and wide: It makes good on its insistence that the old adage about there being “no small parts” isn’t simply a platitude. Twenty students fill out the cast of Tunstall’s Manhattan School and G.B.’s My Leading Lady. Most have songs or solos; all have purpose and personality. And though every ensemble player deserves recognition, Jordyn Taylor (playing Tyquasia with heart, grit, and gusto) and Gwynne Wood (who, as Steph, encapsulates the quiet exasperation of every beleaguered stage manager) shine extra brightly in their roles.
To be a theater kid in the United States is to feel unappreciated; sidelined for the athletes, expendable by school board budgeters, misunderstood by the friends and parents who call rehearsal “play practice.” As arts funding faces a renewed chopping from the top down, it’s hard to shake the feeling that to be a theater person is to live so perennially; to rarely get one’s flowers for hard-earned contributions to the public soul. What a treat, then, to find some solace in Senior Class, which gives student artists their due, in all their messy glory, and reminds us of the young love that called us to the form in the first place.
Senior Class, book, music, and lyrics by Melvin Tunstall III, music and vocal arrangements by Greg Dean Borowsky, conceived by Kevin Duda, and directed by Amy Anders Corcoran, runs through June 22 at Olney Theatre Center. olneytheatre.org. $41–$101.
Lauryn Adams (Alizé) and the ensemble of "Senior Class" at Olney Theatre Center. Photo credit: Teresa Castracane Photography