The company of NYTW’s Saturday Church. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

I attended New York Theatre Workshop’s Saturday Church with some trepidation. One of its writers, James Ijames, wrote one of my favorite shows of the past decade, Fat Ham, so I’d been working to tamp down expectations for this new play. I needn’t have bothered. From the show’s first moments, it was clear I was in for something special.

The show centers around Ulysses (Bryson Battle), a flamboyant young Black man (though how young is frustratingly unclear) struggling to balance his desire to fit in at church with his need to be himself. Fortunately, he meets Raymond (Jackson Kanawha Perry), a gay teen who invites him to Saturday Church, where everyone is welcome and the “only requirement is don’t be boring.” The LGBTQIA+ group, led by Ebony (B Noel Thomas), encourages Ulysses as he explores his sexual and gender identity. But Ulysses’s self-discovery doesn’t sit well with his conservative Aunt Rose (Joaquina Kalukango), and he runs away from home. The boy’s biological and found families race to find him before something bad happens.

If the summary sounds a bit cliché, that’s a reflection of the well-worn and sometimes muddled plot. Based on the quiet, powerful movie musical of the same name and co-written by one of the film’s writers, Damon Cardasis, the show’s book leaves something to be desired. In the movie, Ulysses is clearly a closeted trans kid from the start; in the stage version, his flamboyance codes him as gay—a choice that might be construed as offensive in a different context but here just feels uncomfortably unimaginative. His dilemma, how to be his authentic self and still be loved by his community, is also familiar territory. I guess my frustration here might be more with society, which keeps these stories relevant, than with the show’s creators, who I am sure would be happy to see both homophobia and transphobia disappear.

But lack of social progress doesn’t explain why the book writers choose to undermine the central conflict between Rose and Ulysses by giving him an understanding and accepting mother (Kristolyn Lloyd), or why Ulysses seems to be a preteen in some scenes and a post-teen in others. His father’s death, so present in the movie, is little more than an afterthought here. And the conflict that leads to Ebony quitting her volunteer job, which kicks off her subplot, feels manufactured.

Now, the gushing.

Remember when I was down on Cardasis and Ijames for mediocre plotting? Well, they more than make up for it by creating great characters, writing smart dialogue, and expertly interweaving story and song, even though most pieces come from preexisting Sia songs. Perhaps because Sia’s music and lyrics were reshaped to fit the story (with additional lyrics by Cardasis and Ijames and additional music by Honey Dijon) rather than vice versa, we have ended up with a most improbable creature: a jukebox-adjacent musical where every number advances the narrative without sacrificing originality, creativity, or emotional resonance. Any show would be lucky to have one or two songs of this caliber; Saturday Church is wall-to-wall bangers.

Seriously: Every. Single. Song. Early on, the joyous gospel number “Sunday” made me wonder why every musical isn’t set in a Black church. The high-tempo “I’m That Girl on the Dance Floor” is so much fun, with such incredible choreography (by Darrell Grand Moultrie), it’s hard not to get up and join in. And, oh my God—the beat-fueled Annie Lennox–like romantic duet between Ulysses and Raymond, “House on Fire,” with its minimal but seductive lyrics (“I want to drink you in like oxygen”), conveys the immediacy of teenage love and lust. The ethereal harmonies in “Sunlight,” the poetry of “Brick by Brick,” the stunning, slamming act two opener, “It’s a Queen Thing”… I’m running out of superlatives, y’all, and I’m just scratching the surface.

But wait, there’s more. The cast turns Sia’s songs into something rapturous. Everyone is terrific but I’m going to call out a few individuals, starting with J. Harrison Ghee, who plays Black Jesus, the narrator-slash-Ulysses’s-personally-imagined-deity—and, as I’ve just realized upon consulting the program, Pastor Lewis, the minister of Ulysses’s family church. Ghee is so charismatic, so engaging, that by night’s end I was ready to convert. And though Battle, as Ulysses, doesn’t manage to convincingly unify multiple aspects of his character, the kid has serious pipes. His singing is musical theater gold: emotionally complex and technically superior, with a range of approximately thirty octaves. Thomas as Ebony is equally transcendent when she’s speaking as when she’s dishing out songs like the Kool-and-the-Gang-ish “Nothing to Lose.” And I don’t typically get to mention chorus members, but Primo Thee Ballerina, good God, can that man move.

Both director Whitney White and choreographer Moultrie get a lot of mileage out of the relatively small cast, especially the four-person chorus, creating dynamic and striking visuals on David Zinn’s minimal, flexible set. Adam Honoré’s lighting design, which gets its own moment in the spotlight with attention-grabbing strobes (though at times too much, the device really feels novel during “Feel the Heat”), is imaginative and capable. I can’t say enough about Qween Jean’s endlessly inventive, striking costumes, which belong in a museum. Sound design by Gareth Owen adds an extra layer of texture, complementing the visuals without overwhelming them. And bravo to musical directors Jason Michael Webb and Luke Solomon, responsible for arrangements and orchestration that skillfully traverse diverse musical styles ranging from pop to hip-hop to traditional jazzy show tunes yet always feel part of a cohesive whole. Generally, shows succeed by smoothly integrating creative elements, but White’s approach, letting each artist shine, works wonderfully here.

It is upside-down-world crazy to me that values like diversity, equity, and inclusion have become politicized and demonized, and that a show that promotes those ideas is at all risky. But I guess that’s where we are. In this age where people are speaking out against empathy (empathy!), attending Saturday Church feels oddly like an act of defiance. I can think of no more enjoyable way to stick it to the man.