After nearly 30 years of the reality-TV era, we’ve become conditioned to expect that the fundamental dynamic will be conflict. Who will end up screaming at whom? Who will be the first one to say, “I didn’t come here to make friends, I came to win”? It’s not just typical to find over-dramatic examples of humanity at its train-wreck worst, it’s practically required. Along comes Encore!, a Disney+ original reality show with a startlingly sweet tone.
Conceptually, it’s like a curious mix of a filmed high-school reunion and “let’s put on a show” enthusiasm. Introduced by Kristin Bell, each one-hour episode revolves around cast members from a high-school musical production reuniting years after the fact to re-stage the same show, with each individual taking on the same role. In Episode 1, it’s a 1996 production of Annie in Santee, Calif.; for Episode 2, it’s a 2007 production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast outside of Fort Worth, Texas. For just five days, the now-adult cast members face a concentrated rehearsal schedule—trying to learn lines, tech cues and choreography—before putting on a public performance of their revival show.
That condensed time-frame is, of course, a practical consideration for grown-ups who can only take so much time away from careers and families, but it’s also a way to build some pressure into the structure. With very few exceptions, these are folks who haven’t been on a stage for years, so asking a bunch of non-professionals to be stage-ready in less than a week feels like setting them up for failure—or, at minimum, having someone’s pants fall down on stage.
But when it comes down to it, Encore! isn’t really about the show they’re putting on, although we do get to see a lot of that show at the climax of each episode. These are primarily stories about people contemplating how they thought their lives would look when they were 17 years old, and how they have (or maybe haven’t) achieved their dreams. In the Annie episode, the actor in the lead role—coincidentally also named Annie—is a 40-year-old stay-at-home mom who had once moved to New York to try to be a theater professional; in the Beauty and the Beast episode, voice-over performer Brittany still wrestles with being the “character actor” playing Mrs. Potts rather than the ingénue who gets to be Belle. The stories we learn about their teenage experiences include struggles with being a closeted gay kid in a conservative community, or dealing with absentee parents, but Encore! doesn’t wallow in the pathos. Getting these folks back together becomes a chance to think less about what opportunities have passed them by, and more about what brought them to where they are. They may be re-living a great experience from decades past, but it almost always feels more triumphant than pathetic.
It’s impressive to watch Encore! resist leaning into the opportunities for catty antagonism, especially when both episodes include members of the reunited cast who were once a romantic couple and subsequently broke up. Nor does the show choose to point and laugh and folks who aren’t exactly adept at carrying a tune or mastering intricate footwork. Instead, we get the simple charms of watching the cast-members’ kids in the audience for the performances, seeing a side of their respective parents that they didn’t previously know existed. It will be interesting to see how long the show can sustain variations on this theme, but at least at the outset, it’s surprisingly adept at conveying emotions which lie at the back of the minds of all of us in the audience.
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Let’s Hear From You
We’ve been bringing you previews of the upcoming Disney+ original content all week.
Have you found things you are interested in? Enough to sign up or are you still in a wait and see mindset? What do you think about this show reuniting former real-life high school musical performers?
Now, recreating a bit of the premise of the show, what role(s) might you have played in High School and could you see yourself going on national TV to recreate that performance?
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