Bandstand, a recently-closed Broadway musical, is hosting a special showing of its pro shot on Thursday night in select theaters. After catching the first screening Monday night, I implore you to see it, too.
Bandstand tells the story of Donny Novitski, a World War II veteran recently returned home after the end of the war. While Donny, played by Corey Cott, grapples with readjustment to civilian life and an inability to land a piano-playing gig at any of his old regular clubs, he hears about an NBC-sponsored contest that might give him the opening he needs. The contest is a salute to the troops—and what better way, Donny wonders, than to win that contest with a band of musically-inclined veterans?
The show is both a love letter to traditional musicals and a powerhouse, unlike anything I’ve seen before.
To start, the show looks and sounds beautiful. It boasts a swing score along with direction and choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler, choreographer of Hamilton. It has a lot of traditional staples of musical theater, like the New-York-City-is-the-best-city song (aptly titled “A Band in New York City”), that makes it timeless. Half the songs make you want to dance till dawn, and half of them evoke such powerful emotion in them (thanks to stars Cott and Laura Osnes) that I’m tearing up just thinking about them as I write. By far the best song in the show is Welcome Home (Finale), sung powerfully and played with a ferocity by the stars on stage.
What makes Bandstand so extraordinary, though, is who it fights for. Rarely are military veterans portrayed with such visceral honesty; in popular media, a veteran is either a young man plagued with nightmares or a surly grandfather who eventually opens up to pass down wisdom to the main character.
Bandstand also speaks honestly to the hardships of women in wartime; though there were no women soldiers in combat in WWII, the show explores the grief of Julia Trojan, a war widow played by Broadway tour de force Laura Osnes. Julia wages her own war, caught between mourning her lost husband to wishing to move on and close that grieving, painful part of her life. Julia, like the rest of the show, is unapologetically honest.
It’s Got Your 6-certified portrayal of military veterans is broad and true: alcoholism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, the effects of brain damage, and more are thrown into stark relief by Bandstand.
Bandstand will screen in select theaters Thursday night only.