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There’s a reason why Our Town is consistently performed by High Schools, beyond its evergreen pathos, budget-friendly construction, and being sublimely royalty-free— allowing for any man, woman or Muppet to legally muck up its text. It provides an opportunity for young thespians pouring their hearts into playing Emily Webb with no costume, prop, or shield to hide behind. It allows audiences to fully surrender, constructing the Grover’s Corners of their individual mind palaces. Our Town demonstrates that a show is only as good as the actors embodying it. A blank canvas for them to stretch and shine in a measure matching their talent. It’s a testament that audiences don’t need much than a performer telling them, “this is a glass,” for them to eventually believe it. Human beings are adaptable and simple, Mr. Wilder knew that.

Which is why I’m so relieved SpongeBob SquarePants isn’t singing to us through a giant, foam face mask.

Call it The SpongeBob Musical or SpongeBob SquarePants or SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical (if ya nasty), a sponge by many confusing legal names still sings just as sweet. Originally premiered in 2017, it’s that rarer breed of modern musical that seems to bypass Broadway tenure for the sake of leaping into a touring company— perhaps less a way to recoup costs and more to cement its legacy into the many corners of child community theater. As of this writing, SpongeBob was just listed in the top 10 of the most produced High School musicals of 2023 (beating out Shrek, feeling somewhat personal). Though due to its big-budget and outsized underwater-i-ness, it’s a real wonder why.

I’m here tonight at the No Square Theater, already sweaty and out of breath due to lack of parking and a quiet battle in fighting locals for spots, a rare opportunity to live out the premise of “Surf Wax America” off Weezer’s Blue Album. I took my car to the theater, but I guess I should’ve taken my board. “Oh, you’re the girl who called.” A couple of excited theater ladies chitter familiarly as they hand me my program. “We changed your seat to the best one in the house.” Normally, I’d salivate, but quickly I found out this was code for the front row, neé the stage. I was the only one in the house not wearing flip flops, not the first time I’d be intimidated by Beach People, but the only time I’d had a spotlight of shame. My row also came with a stern warning to tuck my feet in, “or else your toes will get stomped,” A critical concern, considering one of the show’s characters wears 4-legged pants.

For those that lived a childhood under the sea, The SpongeBob Musical is a celebration. For those lurking land-side, it’s best to be a pre-teen’s plus-one. I have the semi-pleasure to be a mix of both, there for the inaugural patty-flipping but eventually departing for the siren song of college. Though in truth, you don’t need a crash-course to understand that in this play, sponges are shorthands for heroes and squirrels are fill-ins for racial threats and plankton is now married to a… computer machine, apparently? Wild how tech is always the first thing that makes us feel so dang old.

“I have to be honest. When I first heard that SpongeBob was being made into a musical, I asked “Why?” Did this silly Nickelodeon cartoon really need to be brought to the stage?” Director Ella Wyatt has been involved in the No Square Theater for more than 10 years, but I’m guessing most of her theatrical experience doesn’t deal with kid-centric spectacles. In fairness, the influx of big-budgeted “child’s theater” is a semi-recent revelation. “But Julia, what about The Wiggles Live! or whenever we strap ice skates onto a poor teenager playing Bluey!” I’m not talking about your arena shows, theme park shows, or the current competitive thunder-dome that is the kids party circuit (Book your session with The BeatBuds now before they become the BTS of 7th birthdays). I’m talking about the influx of Broadway-level musical theater that is unabashedly not for The Olds.

In this case, Disney really led the charge. The ‘90s was a time of strife and suffering as NY theater-people wagged their cab-drawing fingers at the “Mouse-ification” of Times Square (as opposed to the piss-ification of Times Square, an era always reaching to reclaim). Starting with Beauty and the Beast and straight on through Frozen, the “animated movie musical to stage musical” model has now been crafted and harnessed and honed to be a dominating fixture on modern Broadway. There was A Year with Frog and Toad in 2003, Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 2006, Elf: The Musical in 2010, Tim Minchin’s excellent Matilda in 2013, and Shrek: The Musical in 2008 (starring a still-baffling coupling of Sutton Foster as Princess Fiona and Brian D’Arcy James as the titular ogre— Sutton, if you need money, all you need to do is ask!!). Of course, there was and always will be “family-friendly” shows like your Wicked’s and your Hairspray’s and somehow, even your Love Never Die’s, but I’m talking pure, “Get outta my room, Mom! I’m singing!” entertainment— of which SpongeBob is sublimely situated.

I must admit: it was the pool noodles that first really got me. Flanking both sides of the No Square main stage is a mass of maximalist DIY coral and kelp winding its way up to the rafters, equal parts shoddy and stylish. Between them is a wood-constructed set of Bikini Bottom, unobscured by a curtain (because it's artfully obscuring our on-stage band). Then there’s the size of this dang place: 86 cozy seats stacked on top of handcrafted risers, utilizing every available inch to the point of pushing the only accessible bathroom to a carpeted office below. Later, when the entire company is out in the audience-slash-stage, their kick-ball-changes will be so raucous, it’ll earnestly shake the ground like a 4.0 earthquake, making me wonder if there’s a company contest to see how hard they go each show depending on all the broken coffee mugs.

“Who in their right mind would want to listen to the voice of SpongeBob for 2+ hours?” Director Ella Wyatt continues her thought in the show’s program — echoing a similar worry Broadway critics had when they first set their sights on its star, Ethan Slater. “Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Slater seems destined to be identified forever with what is surely a once-in-a-lifetime match of actor and character.” Ben Brantley wrote in his NY Times Review (though Slater is now rumored to be dating Ariana Grande, one way to cleanse your Google Alerts). Slater played his Sponge with infectious, unwavering enthusiasm and so too does our star tonight, Matthew Metzger. He dips into “the voice” when need be, typically through dialogue, just enough to satiate in bridging the divide between TV and tiny theater, but then lets the squeakiness dissolve like bubbles when it’s time to belt.

Matthew’s a clear leader and old theater pro. His previous credits include Pirates of Penzance, Hello Dolly and South Pacific — but his most impressive role might be as a VIP Tour Guide at Disneyland (also known as “Plaids”— coincidence?!) (Yes). Our show begins with Metzger waking to a new morn, rousing our company with, “Bikini Bottom Day” a much softer version of, “Good Morning Baltimore” from Hairspray. The plot sets off from there, with SpongeBob eagerly playing beta to his neighbor’s alpha: Squidward wants to star in his own show he’s been writing; Plankton wants to overtake the Krusty Krab’s business with his Robot Wife Karen; Patrick catches the cult-like fervor of the lemming-like Sardines, who parse existential wisdom from his idiotic ramblings; and Krab’s daughter Pearl longs to see her favorite band The Electric Skates or else she’ll raise the tides with her uncontrollable weeps. All SpongeBob wants, as he always wants, for 24 years of TV episodes, is to be entrusted as manager of the Krusty Krab (and for his neighbors to get along, of course). All these story threads soon tangle up when a nearby volcano’s about to blow, threatening to wipe out the township entirely. Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel, offers to thwart the threat by utilizing her science mind, but the crowd is too caught up in their franticness to listen— and when Plankton points out Sandy’s “from the land” and thus doesn’t understand, the show transforms into a parable of prejudice and racial threat.

It’s the heaviness of these thematic implications that makes me most grateful we’re not watching actors sing through foam and felt (the closest we get to that is Squidward’s extra legs, clearly duct-taped and threatening to break with every soft-shoed step, as well as Mr. Krabs’s fake claws, gripped like oven mitts and almost undercutting an emotional 2nd Act father-daughter ballad). I’m sure the rest of our cast is grateful, too — allowing their full faces to shine and sing and spring to action whenever called.

It’s Ellen Quintero as news anchor “Perch Perkins”, that has the most fun, especially during a scene where she chaotically updates the volcanos threat in real time. In a quick sequence, Ellen pops on, then off, then back on the stage— hair unkempt, clothes increasingly ratted, and stare steadily dead-eyed. I can imagine the cast list going up and everyone angling for who got Sandy Cheeks, but Ellen growing a sly smile when she realized her role had true comedic opportunity. Ellen also plays a gruff-voiced member of The Electric Skates, stretching her range from “straight woman” to “serious douche”, a Streep-like dance if I ever saw one.

Speaking of Sandy, Shea Buchanan fucking rules. She nails the Southern accent, but more importantly takes great care in being the pillar that holds this whole play together. It’s all on Sandy to feel the feels, the story behind the story, and convey the lesson behind the lesson that listening to your neighbors isn’t just about waiting for your turn to talk (or sing). When her character defeatedly surrenders to the overt racism, it just about breaks your heart. When she decides she’s going to “move back home,” it’s perfectly understood. When Metzger as SpongeBob (and eventually, Jamaal Walker as Patrick) pull her out of the funk through song, it’s completely predictable— but that doesn’t make it all less felt. It’s wild how a 24-year old IP has the power to still do that.

SpongeBob was always about community — whether through its board-driven TV-writing style, giving both animators and writers somewhat equal-footing in pulling at premises, or in its Broadway iteration, where almost every single song was outsourced to a different musician from Brian Eno to They Might Be Giants to Jonathan Colton. It’s easy to see why it’s such a hit with High Schools, beyond the simple cosplay of embodying your favorite cartoon.

Audiences don’t need much, SpongeBob’s original Broadway director Tina Lindau knew that. She made the aesthetic choice of scrapping all toon-like apparatuses to encourage her actors to pour themselves into the part. Human beings are adaptable and simple, No Square’s Ella Wyatt knew that, too. I personally think their low-budget version of the “Mount Humongous” volcano to be far more effective than Broadway’s, because nothing’s more terrifying than an actor on a single ladder in a low-ceilinged stage, next to another actor on loose scaffolding, next to an audience member facing the very real premise of being the only thing to soften the blow should they both fall.

Though this isn’t a musical that’ll go down in the canon. Or have a “bop” that’ll keep you humming into the Laguna Beach night on the long, long trek back to your car, I’m happy it’s here— for the kids who performed it with whole-hearted passion in a rented spare room at an American Legion Hall in Laguna Beach and for Ariana Grande, about to have the wildest pillow talk of her life.

No Square Theater’s performance of The SpongeBob Musical has wrapped, but their upcoming production of The Shape of Things starts on October 6th and runs through October 15th. Buy tickets here.

My Summer of Small Theatre will be gone fishin’ till mid-October! Announcements and excitements and mini-projects abound, so stay tuned (and if you want the REAL rambly dirt, follow me on Instagram, as if that isn’t precisely how you found out about this Substack in the first place 😎).

I love you!

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