(courtesy IMP Awards)
Mockumentaries are curious beasts.
On the one hand, they give creators a golden opportunity to skewer a whole herd of sacred cows purely by positioning a person in a situation that is so eerily close to what it is in real life that telling the difference between the authentic place and time and its parodic doppelgänger can be a challenging proposition.
Done properly, and good lord Theater Camp from writers Noah Galvin, Ben Platt, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman (the first three contributors also star in headlining roles in the film) – Gordon and Lieberman also directed – is done so superbly well you marvel at its insightfully comedic, heartfelt perfection, a mockumentary supersizes what is both good and bad about a particular world, allowing you to laugh knowingly at it but to also feel engaged and possessive about it too.
Let’s face it – no place we call home, whether it’s a workplace, a community or an organisation is ever beyond reproach, and if you truly love it, you will be willing to see it skewered, however affectionately, so that you can be aware of its pluses and minuses and it embrace it accordingly.
The sheer delight of Theater Camp is that it manages to simultaneously poke fun at the world of theatre, specifically in its embryonic form as a summer camp where aspiring thespians can hone their craft and feel at home with those just like them, while channelling an overwhelming love for it, such that it emerges as a love song to the theatrical arts but also to the community that surrounds it, and without which many creative people would feel lost and dispossessed of purpose and a profound sense of belonging.
The outsider who acts as our entry point to this precious closed world inhabited by would-be diva singers and those across the sexual and creative spectrum for whom being the “weird theatre nerd” is no longer a pejorative but a celebrated statement of rich and meaningful identity, is the son of the woman who owns the camp, Adiron-ACTS – a play on the mountain range in eastern the eastern United States in which the camp is set – Troy (Jimmy Tatro), a bro-heavy influencer who has always rejected the great love of his mother’s life in favour of becoming, wait for it, an en-troy-peneur.
With his mother Joan (Amy Sedaris in gloriously quirky form) not able to fulfill her usual role of inspiring camp matriarch – she may be intense but she loves the theatre and loves the kids who want with their whole oft-rejected being to be an enduring part of it – it is up to Troy to run the camp and keep Joan’s vision alive and kicking, a feat made all the more complicated by the fact that looming financial issues may put paid to the camp altogether.
Initially Troy doesn’t much care if this happens but after some ill-advised flirting with the presentative of a venture capital firm that claims to want to work collaboratively but whom we all know has darker intentions in mind – he comes to see why this means so much to the kids and to the long-term teachers who instruct them with passionate devotion everywhere.
Among them are Rebecca-Diane and Amos Klobuchar (Gordon and Platt respectively) who met as attendees of Joan’s special world of theatrical training but who now are teachers of longstanding who claim to prefer teaching to performing.
Whether that’s an avoidance of the harsh reality of carving a career out in the arts or simply a love of bringing forth the new generation isn’t immediately clear but when one of them decides they might actually want to more than dip their toes in the waters of performance, it causes some ructions between the two who must deal with the personal fallout even as their camp world begins to break apart around them.
They are joined by a raft of wonderful colleagues such as Clive (Nathan Lee Graham) and Rita (Caroline Aaron) and newcomer Janet (Ayo Edebiri) who is clearly not the real deal and acts as someone, along with Troy, who calls out the self-involved behaviour of people who have called the camp home for so long that they might have forgotten what the outside is like and that there may be some chinks in their self-perceived perfect world.
Both the staff and the kids though are treated with nothing but love and respect by Theater Camp‘s creators who may see blemishes in their perfect world but who know they aren’t fatal and are hilariously funny in many ways, if only because they point to the proclivity we all have to lose ourselves to an uncritical extent in the world we love.
Being creatures of the theatre themselves, the writer skewer the more strange, over-involved aspects of theatre denizens with great love and respect and while there are many times you laugh at the absurdity or the over-earnestness of many of the characters, you are never left in any doubt that for all their quirks, these people love what they do and they need to keep it going anyway they can.
It’s this heartwarming balancing of playful parody and affectionate devotion that really gives Theater Camp such a weighty heart and soul, underscored all the more by the fact that if you’re ever been on the outer and suffered at the hands of the unappreciative mainstream crowd, who only see difference and not passion, you will well appreciate why Adiron-ACTS means so much to the people for whom it is their life and meaning.
Quite apart from anything else, Theater Camp is hilarious, never succumbing to the one-joke vehicle the trailer suggests it might be – not all mockumentaries deliver on the rich potentiality of their premise or sustain their gleefully observant parody to a satisfyingly consistent all the way through – and staying the course, delivering up affectionate skewering, a real depth and understanding for the Others for whom this camp is a protective and safe bubble from which to face an often misunderstanding, hostile world, and a sublimely good balance of hilarity and heart that makes you walk out of the cinema fifty metres high, glad the world has people who love what they do so much and that they will likely keep getting to do it for as long as they can.