“Saturday Church wears its uptown ambitions on very glittering, sparkling, extravagant sleeves. It’s a new musical that owes a lot — perhaps too much for its own good — to Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein’s “Kinky Boots.” Flashy boots are also central to the story of “Saturday Church,” which had its world premiere last week at the New York Theatre Workshop.
An in-the-closet gay teenager, Ulysses (Bryson Battle) finds love, identity and family not in the conventional Sunday church that he and his homophobic aunt (Joaquina Kalukango) attend but rather the Saturday Church, a social club that offers meals and clothing to gay and trans youth, many of whom are homeless. No quicker can you say “drag balls,” which the Saturday Church also houses, than you’ve got the ideal environment for lots of big and loud musical numbers. The appropiately colorful and kinky costumes are by Qween Jean.
I came to this new stage musical under less than ideal circumstances, having seen its source material, the 2017 film “Saturday Church,” sensitively written and directed by Damon Cardasis. The stage musical’s book by Cardasis and James Ijames tells the same story with a couple of jiggers — one great, the other somewhat less so. On stage, every little and subtly detailed moment in the film has been blown up to the size of a Broadway musical like “Kinky Boots or, for that matter, “Hello, Dolly!” In the film, Cardasis achieved the remarkable feat of combining the casually delivered musical numbers of “La La Land” with the heartbreak of Italian neo-realism. What Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini achieved with nonprofessional actors, Cardasis did with Luka Kain playing Ulysses in the film. Kain is not so much effeminate as he is fragile, and his is not so much a performance as it is an embodiment. There aren’t more than a half dozen songs, by Nathan Larson, and when a character starts singing, it’s always a bit of a jolt but the music is never more than someone thinking out loud.
That approach probably wouldn’t work on stage. Instead of Larson’s quiet ballads, Sia provides her signature dance music, supplemented by “additional lyrics” by Cardasis and Ijames and “additional music” by Honey Dijon. The movie is heartbreaking. The stage musical is ostentatious and is at its very best when the characters are singing and dancing. The good news: There’s a lot of singing and dancing, with choreographer Darrell Grand Moultrie delivering one showstopper after another.
Where Cardasis and Ijames’s book diverges from the screenplay is Black Jesus, who narrates the show and acts as Ulysses’ fairy godmother. J. Harrison Ghee plays this drag queen, as well as Pastor Lewis at the less-than-friendly Sunday church that Ulysses and his aunt attend. Clearly, Ghee’s Tony Award-winning stint in “Some Like It Hot” was just a warmup for the similar gay/straight portrayal this actor essays to perfection here. Such a singular talent, Ghee is getting musicals tailor-made to what is a very unique persona.
Much less wonderful is giving the trans character Ebony (B Noel Thomas, being appropriately grand) a back story that involves a lover who committed suicide. To paraphrase Erich Segal, love is always having to say you’re sorry. The movie “Saturday Church” causes heartbreak because its characters never ask for our sympathy. The stage musical “Saturday Church” never stops begging for it.
Luka Kain’s performance in the film version is so indelible I couldn’t get it out of my head while watching Bryson Battle present an entirely different Ulysses. On stage, when this teenager runs away from home, it surprised me that his mother (Kristolyn Lloyd) became distraught. Because Battle is a big, robust man and he appears on stage to be pushing 30, I thought Mom would be delighted that he’d finally, finally left the nest.
What Battle does bring to the role is a gorgeous singing voice and his falsetto almost makes up for what his acting lacks. He first achieved fame on the 24th season of “The Voice,” where he “earned a four-chair turn during the Blind Auditions,” whatever that is. Battle is 22 years old.
Whitney White had quite the 2024-25 theater season. This director kicked it off with the great play “Liberation,” which transfers to Broadway later this year, and she single-handedly sank the first Broadway revival of “The Last Five Years” with her misguided direction. With “Saturday Church,” White’s direction sets up Moultrie’s production numbers effectively, but the book scenes when the actors attempt to earn our tears invariably lag. Fortunately, Cardasis and Ijames keep their hackneyed kitchen-sink dialogue to a minimum.
