As the Creative Cauldron prepares to move to its new home, an as-yet-unfinished, donor-powered location, the final show of the theater’s 2023 — 2024 season is a testament to the necessity for live theater and its power to bring people together. “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin,” written by Kirsten Childs and directed by Angelisa Gillyard, is a timely, boisterous, Technicolor blast of joy and music, and a major coup for the Cauldron.
Orchestrated with boundless energy, charm, and empathy, the level of talent both on and off the stage is absolutely staggering. With only a few weeks to rehearse (both the musical itself and all the trimmings, such as lights and sound), “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin” is undoubtedly a product of great love, passion, and artistic skill.
With character-driven direction by Gillyard, frenetically intricate choreography by Maurice Johnson, and consistently effective, head-bopping music courtesy of music director Amy Conley, the 90-minute musical flies by, leaving one hoping the cast and crew magically re-do the entire spectacle.
The Creative Cauldron stage, a comparatively sparse, minimalist space, is used to full effect as gorgeous costumes, by Margie Jervis, and the projection and lights, by Lynn Joslin, evocatively resurrect bygone decades with speed and aplomb.
The swinging 1960s are brought to life with eye-popping color, ‘70s New York City cool is stark and tough, and even a little girl’s dream world is ushered in with total abandon and dedication. The musical’s combination of dancing, dialogue, ecstatic sights and sounds, elevates every aspect of the story, capturing the senses and lifting the heart.
Christen Young, who portrays Viveca Stanton, the eponymous “Bubbly,” is a revelation, dauntlessly leading the way and balancing out the weight of the story’s themes with the levity and high-energy nature of many of the dance sequences. Trenton McKenzie Beavers, as Gregory, is Viveca’s long-time friend — someone she grows up with and who experiences an important journey of his own. Indeed, “journey” may be a key word for this musical.
Viveca’s story starts in the sunny L.A. of the ‘60s where, as a young girl, she aspires to fit in and be white. At the outset, the lightning-strong dance interludes bely a serious intent and the beginning of crucial journeys for several of the characters. As news about the real-world 1963 Birmingham church bombing filters into the story’s fictional veneer, Viveca finds herself caught between the realism of her mother (Bianca Lipford) and the smiling optimism of her father (Carl L. Williams).
As Viveca grows older, moving from junior high into high school and beyond, her story is punctuated with make-believe conversations with her doll (who, at one point, provides one of the musical’s funniest and profound moments), sojourns with friends and would-be lovers, and even a surreal, brilliantly-executed dream sequence with Harriet Tubman leading a group of slaves to freedom. Tubman, who comes across a sleeping Viveca in the woods, becomes a sort of portent of the inner conflict to come.
If this coming-of-age story featuring historically-accurate depictions of racial hatred, cultural tension, a dream Harriet Tubman, talking dolls, and a breezy trip through four different decades (beautifully recreated with minimal on-set detail) seems like it may be attempting to cover a lot of ground, that would of course be right. Part of the wonderful excitement of “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin” is that this musical, start to finish, wholly succeeds.
As the world continues to spin, eras give way to change and new zeitgeists — laid-back hippies and Black Power college students are brought back with pitch-perfect clarity — “Bubbly” continues to persevere through the New York theater scene (under the watchful, patronizing eye of “Director Bob,” a supremely entertaining reincarnation of Bob Fosse, particularly as he appears in the 1979 film “All That Jazz”).
By the time Bubbly’s story ends, what the audience has witnessed is a synthesis of personal realization and the blessing (and occasional curse) of self-expression — the joyful, sometimes isolating nature of being an artist. A musical about a dancer, a story about a little Black girl who is not quite sure what she wants but finds herself anyway, and an energetic, vivid time capsule of the good and bad in the American experience, “The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin” is a musical that deserves to be seen. And seen again.