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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Theater Camp

Streaming on Theaters

There might not be a higher form of geek than the theater kid. And a whole camp of them? Well, forget it. It would be mean if it weren’t such a finely-polished cliche. But Theater Camp is proof that the best satire is often an inside job: Molly Young and Ben Platt, who grew up together and are inveterate musical theater nerds, directed and wrote, respectively. When the founder of Adirond-Acts, a musical theater camp in upstate New York, goes into a coma, her buffoonish, aspiring influencer son—played to riotous effect by Jimmy Tatro—steps in to save the camp from near-certain financial ruin. The only problem is that his taste for music doesn’t extend much past Post Malone, and it’s up to the camp’s ensemble of eccentric counselors and precocious players to rescue their artistic haven from a hostile private-equity takeover. The result is a comedy of errors with a most sensitive soul. —Nathan King