![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/The-company-of-NYTWs-SATURDAY-CHURCH-photo-by-Marc-J.-Franklin-scaled.jpg\")
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The company of NYTW\u2019s Saturday Church. Photo: Marc J. Franklin<\/p>\n
I attended New York Theatre Workshop\u2019s Saturday Church with some trepidation. One of its writers, James Ijames, wrote one of my favorite shows of the past decade, Fat Ham, so I\u2019d been working to tamp down expectations for this new play. I needn\u2019t have bothered. From the show\u2019s first moments, it was clear I was in for something special.<\/p>\n
The show centers around Ulysses (Bryson Battle), a flamboyant young Black man (though how young is frustratingly unclear) struggling to balance his desire to fit in at church with his need to be himself. Fortunately, he meets Raymond (Jackson Kanawha Perry), a gay teen who invites him to Saturday Church, where everyone is welcome and the \u201conly requirement is don\u2019t be boring.\u201d The LGBTQIA+ group, led by Ebony (B Noel Thomas), encourages Ulysses as he explores his sexual and gender identity. But Ulysses\u2019s self-discovery doesn\u2019t sit well with his conservative Aunt Rose (Joaquina Kalukango), and he runs away from home. The boy\u2019s biological and found families race to find him before something bad happens.<\/p>\n
If the summary sounds a bit clich\u00e9, that\u2019s a reflection of the well-worn and sometimes muddled plot. Based on the quiet, powerful movie musical of the same name and co-written by one of the film\u2019s writers, Damon Cardasis, the show\u2019s book leaves something to be desired. In the movie, Ulysses is clearly a closeted trans kid from the start; in the stage version, his flamboyance codes him as gay\u2014a choice that might be construed as offensive in a different context but here just feels uncomfortably unimaginative. His dilemma, how to be his authentic self and still be loved by his community, is also familiar territory. I guess my frustration here might be more with society, which keeps these stories relevant, than with the show\u2019s creators, who I am sure would be happy to see both homophobia and transphobia disappear.<\/p>\n
But lack of social progress doesn\u2019t explain why the book writers choose to undermine the central conflict between Rose and Ulysses by giving him an understanding and accepting mother (Kristolyn Lloyd), or why Ulysses seems to be a preteen in some scenes and a post-teen in others. His father\u2019s death, so present in the movie, is little more than an afterthought here. And the conflict that leads to Ebony quitting her volunteer job, which kicks off her subplot, feels manufactured.<\/p>\n
Now, the gushing.<\/p>\n
Remember when I was down on Cardasis and Ijames for mediocre plotting? Well, they more than make up for it by creating great characters, writing smart dialogue, and expertly interweaving story and song, even though most pieces come from preexisting Sia songs. Perhaps because Sia\u2019s music and lyrics were reshaped to fit the story (with additional lyrics by Cardasis and Ijames and additional music by Honey Dijon) rather than vice versa, we have ended up with a most improbable creature: a jukebox-adjacent musical where every number advances the narrative without sacrificing originality, creativity, or emotional resonance. Any show would be lucky to have one or two songs of this caliber; Saturday Church is wall-to-wall bangers.<\/p>\n
Seriously: Every. Single. Song. Early on, the joyous gospel number \u201cSunday\u201d made me wonder why every musical isn\u2019t set in a Black church. The high-tempo \u201cI\u2019m That Girl on the Dance Floor\u201d is so much fun, with such incredible choreography (by Darrell Grand Moultrie), it\u2019s hard not to get up and join in. And, oh my God\u2014the beat-fueled Annie Lennox\u2013like romantic duet between Ulysses and Raymond, \u201cHouse on Fire,\u201d with its minimal but seductive lyrics (\u201cI want to drink you in like oxygen\u201d), conveys the immediacy of teenage love and lust. The ethereal harmonies in \u201cSunlight,\u201d the poetry of \u201cBrick by Brick,\u201d the stunning, slamming act two opener, \u201cIt\u2019s a Queen Thing\u201d\u2026 I\u2019m running out of superlatives, y\u2019all, and I\u2019m just scratching the surface.<\/p>\n
But wait, there\u2019s more. The cast turns Sia\u2019s songs into something rapturous. Everyone is terrific but I\u2019m going to call out a few individuals, starting with J. Harrison Ghee, who plays Black Jesus, the narrator-slash-Ulysses\u2019s-personally-imagined-deity\u2014and, as I\u2019ve just realized upon consulting the program, Pastor Lewis, the minister of Ulysses\u2019s family church. Ghee is so charismatic, so engaging, that by night\u2019s end I was ready to convert. And though Battle, as Ulysses, doesn\u2019t manage to convincingly unify multiple aspects of his character, the kid has serious pipes. His singing is musical theater gold: emotionally complex and technically superior, with a range of approximately thirty octaves. Thomas as Ebony is equally transcendent when she\u2019s speaking as when she\u2019s dishing out songs like the Kool-and-the-Gang-ish \u201cNothing to Lose.\u201d And I don\u2019t typically get to mention chorus members, but Primo Thee Ballerina, good God, can that man move.<\/p>\n
Both director Whitney White and choreographer Moultrie get a lot of mileage out of the relatively small cast, especially the four-person chorus, creating dynamic and striking visuals on David Zinn\u2019s minimal, flexible set. Adam Honor\u00e9\u2019s lighting design, which gets its own moment in the spotlight with attention-grabbing strobes (though at times too much, the device really feels novel during \u201cFeel the Heat\u201d), is imaginative and capable. I can\u2019t say enough about Qween Jean\u2019s endlessly inventive, striking costumes, which belong in a museum. Sound design by Gareth Owen\u00a0adds an extra layer of texture, complementing the visuals without overwhelming them. And bravo to musical directors Jason Michael Webb\u00a0and\u00a0Luke Solomon, responsible for arrangements and orchestration that skillfully traverse diverse musical styles ranging from pop to hip-hop to traditional jazzy show tunes yet always feel part of a cohesive whole. Generally, shows succeed by smoothly integrating creative elements, but White\u2019s approach, letting each artist shine, works wonderfully here.<\/p>\n
It is upside-down-world crazy to me that values like diversity, equity, and inclusion have become politicized and demonized, and that a show that promotes those ideas is at all risky. But I guess that\u2019s where we are. In this age where people are speaking out against empathy (empathy!), attending Saturday Church feels oddly like an act of defiance. I can think of no more enjoyable way to stick it to the man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The company of NYTW\u2019s Saturday Church. Photo: Marc J. Franklin I attended New York Theatre Workshop\u2019s Saturday Church…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":240395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-240394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}