There’s been a general dismissal of The Prom‘s closing musical number, “Wear Your Crown”, and especially of Meryl Streep‘s rap interlude (1.54 to 2:11) — “”And if somebody starts in with new drama, just go high like Michelle Obama.”
It seems unfair to dump on Streep, who’s just going with the flow and giving her usual all. What’s apparently wrong with or certainly grating about The Prom is the film itself, which is starting to feel like a Cats-level enterprise — an overflowing glass of sugary, sticky, socially enlightened energy fizz…overbearingly pushed, pizazzed…lemme outta here.
We all want Emma Nolan (Jo Ellen Pellman) to take her girlfriend Alyssa (Ariana DeBose) to their high-school prom in Indiana…do it! Live and let live! But the underwhelming pro-progressive vote in the 11.3 election told us that people are sick of elite wokester scoldings and instructions about how to think and behave. Thank you, enlightened Broadwayites, for flying in from The Big Apple to celebrate Emma and Alyssa and to straighten out the local anti-LGBTQ bigots….thank you for saying all the right things in such a treacly and overbearing fashion.
People hate this shit (or at least I do), and are in no mood to be entertained to death by Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Keegan-Michael Key and Andrew Rannells. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people in Indiana voted for Trump as a way of saying “fuck the celebrative, hectoring, instructive attitudes behind musicals like The Prom!”