Film Review: Theater Camp

Theater Camp is on general release.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Summer camp is something that, by and large, we in Britain have only access to via US film and TV representations. The mockumentary format is much more familiar though; from The Office to Twenty Twelve, W1A and This Country, the form has long been a medium ripe for satirisation.

Those two things collide in new feature film Theater Camp, a spoof documentary set in a residential summer camp for children with an interest in the performing arts. Positioned in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, the punningly named AdirondACTS camp’s entire syllabus – and its every existence – is put into jeopardy when its principal is put into a coma following exposure to a stray strobe lighting effect during a school production of Bye Bye Birdie.

Writing team Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman and Ben Platt have developed this feature as an extension of their 2020 short film of the same name, with Gordon and Lieberman directing, creating a film which feels like it belongs in the history of film rockumentaries from This is Spinal Tap to Best in Show and beyond.

After the indisposition of principal Joan Dubinsky (Amy Sedaris) the teaching staff – powered by teachers and former camp alumni Amos (Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Gordon) – do their pest to plough on. Amos and Rebecca-Diane – actors who have become teachers while they wait for that coveted paid role – attempt to continue their annual tradition of writing and directing their own musical, this year in the form of a tribute to Joan. But in the background, Joan’s son Troy – a social media “finance bro” with no head for business and even less for the arts, played with knowing dumbness by Jimmy Tatro – struggles with the realisation that the entire enterprise is on the brink of catastrophic financial failure.

Gordon and Platt form a hilarious double act as the lifelong friends who, obsessed with the trappings of musical theatre, are outclassed at every step by their young pupils (the casting of young talent in the film being one of its many highlights). Jokes come thick and fast, playing at all levels – so musical fans entrenched in Broadway lore should feel comfortable seeing the film alongside friends and family whose knowledge of the theatre may not be quite so deep.

Ayo Edebini, taking a break from her Emmy-nominated appearance in The Bear, is gloriously dry as a new teacher who, having obviously doctored her CV, finds herself leading mime and stage combat workshops for which she has no experience, while Galvin as the camp technician Glenn steals every scene.

There are slight slumps in the middle of the film, as the mockumentary format occasionally gives way in order to drive the plot forward. But after taking such breaths, it quickly gathers itself to continue the laughs. Along the way, Tatro’s gauche acting principal softens as he, too, begins to understand the amazing power that the performing arts has on participants and audiences alike.

And that’s the greatest success of Theater Camp: as much as it sends up everyone involved in the AdirondACTS community, it does so knowing that the silliness inherent in such places is just the surface layer of a community structure that has benefits for everybody. Summer camps may not be a tradition in Britain, but despite all the antics in this glorious comedy, one can’t help feeling they should be.

Scott Matthewman