"Bright Lights, Little City"
By Brandon Reynolds
Excerpted from Style Weekly
June 11, 2008
Williamsburg is so smug that it has a sister borough in New York. But imagine if there was a Colonial Williamsburg
up there. All the Manhattan expats and assorted hipsters forced to wear breeches and blow glass along the
avenues. People would come in from Queens to buy horseshoes and visit Ye Olde Candy Shoppe.
Maybe it’s ahead of its time, here, but whatever. The point is that Richmond, at last, has established its presence,
right in the city itself. Former Richmonder Leon J. Bynum, a Varina High graduate who went on to Columbia
University, has written a bit of theater about us. “Richmond: A Musical Fantasia” tells the story of high school
students growing up in a Southern city, dealing with things like sex, interracial relationships and homosexuality. It
also explores the decade Bynum, 28, chose to do his growing up in.
“It kind of seeks to chronicle the experience of growing up in the ’90s,” he says. Bynum’s hoping the references to
Notorious B.I.G., Kurt Cobain and Bill Clinton’s presidency do for the last decade what “Grease” did for the
1950s. Appearances by Ukrop’s and Dogwood Dell, right there in the heart of Manhattan, offer something for the
Richmond-savvy audience, off-off-Broadway.
His goal in choosing Richmond as the setting of his story is to explore issues of gender and sexuality, which tend to
get brushed under the rug here in the South. But, he says, these issues “are the same things that affect people
everywhere.” Setting it in a high school gives the players an excuse to burst into song. “When you’re 16 or 17, it’s
inherently dramatic,” he says. “People breaking into song isn’t that weird when it’s so emotional.”
Bynum’s Harmony Theatre Company presents “Richmond: A Musical Fantasia” at the Producers’ Club Theaters at
358 W. 44th St., June 18-22. If all goes well, Bynum hopes to bring it to Richmond in the future.
By Brandon Reynolds
Excerpted from Style Weekly
June 11, 2008
Williamsburg is so smug that it has a sister borough in New York. But imagine if there was a Colonial Williamsburg
up there. All the Manhattan expats and assorted hipsters forced to wear breeches and blow glass along the
avenues. People would come in from Queens to buy horseshoes and visit Ye Olde Candy Shoppe.
Maybe it’s ahead of its time, here, but whatever. The point is that Richmond, at last, has established its presence,
right in the city itself. Former Richmonder Leon J. Bynum, a Varina High graduate who went on to Columbia
University, has written a bit of theater about us. “Richmond: A Musical Fantasia” tells the story of high school
students growing up in a Southern city, dealing with things like sex, interracial relationships and homosexuality. It
also explores the decade Bynum, 28, chose to do his growing up in.
“It kind of seeks to chronicle the experience of growing up in the ’90s,” he says. Bynum’s hoping the references to
Notorious B.I.G., Kurt Cobain and Bill Clinton’s presidency do for the last decade what “Grease” did for the
1950s. Appearances by Ukrop’s and Dogwood Dell, right there in the heart of Manhattan, offer something for the
Richmond-savvy audience, off-off-Broadway.
His goal in choosing Richmond as the setting of his story is to explore issues of gender and sexuality, which tend to
get brushed under the rug here in the South. But, he says, these issues “are the same things that affect people
everywhere.” Setting it in a high school gives the players an excuse to burst into song. “When you’re 16 or 17, it’s
inherently dramatic,” he says. “People breaking into song isn’t that weird when it’s so emotional.”
Bynum’s Harmony Theatre Company presents “Richmond: A Musical Fantasia” at the Producers’ Club Theaters at
358 W. 44th St., June 18-22. If all goes well, Bynum hopes to bring it to Richmond in the future.
