Review: Bring it On the Musical at Liverpool Empire ***

Cheerleading always feels like one of those peculiarly American things – right there with Spring Break, glee clubs, sorority houses and frat parties.

But apparently there are also about 900 cheerleading squads in the UK. Who knew?

It’s not just about cheering on your team either it seems, but rather an athletic art form that is highly competitive. And where there’s competition, there’s inevitably conflict which is perfect for storytellers.

Six years after Liverpool Empire Youth Theatre staged Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights (a tale of family and community on the cusp of change), it’s returned to the creator of Hamilton to stage his lesser-known Bring It On the Musical.

While it shares a name and central subject matter with a 2000 film, Bring It On the Musical has a vastly different plot - plus a roster of energetic numbers and ballads, both co-written by Miranda.

Imagine Pitch Perfect with pompoms with a dash of Legally Blonde, a soupcon of Single White Female, a mote of Mean Girls and a nod in the direction of Grease and you get the picture.

Campbell (Isabel Cosgrove) is top of the cheerleading tree at Truman High School and determined to drill her squad to success in the hotly contested regional competition with her trusty lieutenants Skylar (Izzy Chapelle), Kylar (a cheekily amusing Georgie Hames) and young protégé Eva (Annabel Wright).

Things go disastrously wrong when Campbell is suddenly transferred to the rougher Jackson High School in a surprise ‘redistricting’.

Leaving her friends and sappy boyfriend (Sean Brennan) behind, and with only Truman’s outsider Bridget (Amelie Pridgeon) for company, she tries to forge a new life which includes persuading Danielle (Olivia Abassi) the cool leader of Jackson’s hip-hop crew to help her form a new cheerleading team to take on her old school and achieve her dream of lifting the trophy.

But when mishaps befall both Skylar and Kylar, and Eva becomes head of Truman’s squad, Campbell begins to smell a rat.

Essentially Bring It On it’s a tale of friendship, betrayal, rivalry and forgiveness – all very Shakespearean.

Above: Jackson High School students. Top: Campbell (Isabel Cosgrove) and the Truman cheerleading squad. Photos by Phil Tragen.

While it’s not Miranda’s strongest stage show (the plot is serviceable but thin and there’s a strange lack of dramatic suspense), the young actors bring their all to it, not least the series of hugely energetic routines created by choreographers Laura Meeson and Lucy Kinsella and delivered by a cast which includes several daring and elastic gymnasts among its ensemble.

A calm and confident Cosgrove, who played Margot in the youth theatre’s 2023 production Legally Blonde, is very watchable in the central role and sings with enjoyable expressiveness – her performance of the ballad One Perfect Moment is a particular highlight.

Abassi gives her spiky Danielle some hidden vulnerability, while Wright evidently revels in her role as the vauntingly ambitious Eva, and other cast members – including Kalil Ahmed as Cameron and Phoebe Tasker and René Barnes as Danielle’s two sidekicks - show their comedy credentials.

A shame then that on opening night some of the dialogue, delivered with decent American accents, felt frustratingly muffled and the lyrics of many of the songs – performed with a loud live band - were annoyingly indistinct, making it somewhat challenging viewing.