[As has occasionally happened
on ROT, the coverage of the press response has
swelled my report on School of Rock – The Musical beyond my customary limit. (As
you’ll see, the review round-up accounts for more than half the post’s
length.) I’ll make the same explanation
I’ve made before for this circumstance: rather than stinting on the review
quotations or reducing the selection of press outlets I’ve consulted, I’m
letting the report go long. The
discussion and my assessment of the performance of the movical, however, is no
longer than more typical posts of this kind.
I hope you’ll at last sample the press response I summarize, but that
decision’s up to the reader. (For
discussions of movicals in general, see my posts “Movicals,” 20 September 2013, and “More on Movicals,” 21 February
2014.)]
What’s the matter with kids today? That’s the musical
question asked 56 years ago when rock ’n’ roll was still a baby—even younger
than the fifth-graders in School of Rock
– The Musical. Back then, the
answer, as far as the adults of Sweet Apple, Ohio, were concerned at least, was
pretty much everything: their music, their clothes, their language, their dances. School
of Rock’s answer? Not a thing—as
long as they can be in a rock band!
School of Rock is
a show I never thought I’d go see, to be honest. I watched the 2003 Paramount Pictures movie directed
by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black, and it was cute but not really my
cuppa. (I’m not a big fan of Jack
Black. I find him more irritating than
funny.) I figured it was aimed at ’tweens
about the age of the kids in the story.
Besides, way back in 1981, when I saw Evita, I decided that I wasn’t going to spend money to see any more
Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. But my
cousin and her husband called me and said they’d be coming up from Maryland for
a birthday party and they’d like me to join them for a show—and believe it or
not, the only one, play or musical, neither of us had seen or were already
planning to see that was even remotely acceptable was . . . that’s right: School of Rock. It had gotten pretty decent reviews, as far
as I’d read, and I really didn’t want to say no to my cousins again, having
turned them down in January when they went to Something Rotten! (which I saw later and absolutely loved; see my
report posted on ROT on 11 May), so I
said yes. And off the three of us
baby-boomers went to catch the one o’clock matinee at the Winter Garden Theatre
on Sunday, 21 August.
With a book by Julian Fellowes (Broadway’s Mary Poppins, PBS’s Downton Abbey), music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita,
Cats, Starlight Express . . . oh, hell, and a passel more everyone
already knows!), and lyrics by Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid, Sister
Act, Leap of Faith), School of Rock – The Musical, based on
Mike White’s screenplay, began
previews on Broadway on 9 November 2015 and opened on 6 December. (After the mat on the 21st, School of Rock had played 31 previews and 295 regular
performances.) The production, directed
by Laurence Connor (the current Broadway revival of Les Miz) and choreographed by JoAnn M. Hunter, received nominations
for four Tonys (Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role) and five Drama Desk Awards (Outstanding
Musical, Outstanding Orchestrations, Outstanding Lyrics, Outstanding Sound
Design, Outstanding Music) but won none.
It was also nominated unsuccessfully for Outer Critics Circle, Broadway.com
Audience, and Drama League Awards.
The Broadway production is the show’s world première, but
Lloyd Webber (who’s also a producer of the show) staged a concert version at
the Gramercy Theatre (on 23rd Street near Gramercy Park) in Manhattan in June
2015. Lloyd Webber has announced that School of Rock will make its London
début at the New London Theatre this fall with previews starting on 24 October and
an opening on 14 November. (A U.S.
national tour will go out in 2017.) The original
cast recording of School of Rock – The
Musical was released by Warner Bros. Records on 4 December 2015. Also before the play’s opening, Lloyd Webber
and R&H Theatricals, a division of the Rodgers & Hammerstein
Organization, announced in October 2015 that the amateur rights for the musical
would be available immediately for productions starting rehearsals after
opening night; there have already been school productions of School of Rock staged around the
country. (The movie also spun off a
half-hour cable series on Nickelodeon which débuted last March and started its
second season earlier this month.)
The story of School of
Rock – The Musical (which runs two hours and 20 minutes with one
intermission) follows the film’s plot pretty closely. Aside from the exchange of original songs for
covers, the stage musical changes a few characters’ names, mostly among the kid
musicians. Dewey Finn, played by Black
in the movie and Will Blum (the alternate for Alex Brightman) at the matinee
performance I saw, is still the central figure in the plot. He’s still a slacker rock guitarist; he’s
still booted out of the band he helped start; and he still impersonates a
substitute teacher at the prestigious Horace Green prep school in his anonymous
city. (One other small change: in the
movie, the class Dewey turns into a rock band is fourth grade; in the play, the
kids are fifth-graders. That only means
the 11- to 13-year-old actors playing the students are supposed to be 10
instead of 9.)
Dewey Finn (Blum) is a wannabe rock guitarist who’s kicked
out of his own band, No Vacancy (think Metallica rip-off), for constantly
up-staging the lead singer, Theo (John Arthur Greene), with his on-stage antics
(“I’m Too Hot for You”). The band’s
moving up, the other musicians think, and Dewey no longer fits in; for one
thing, they’re all good-looking (they say) and Dewey’s . . . well, a zhlub.
Then he’s also fired from his day job at a record store (“When I Climb
to the Top of Mount Rock”). Constantly broke,
Dewey shares an apartment with his friend and former Maggotdeath bandmate, Ned Schneebly
(Spencer Moses), who’s now a substitute teacher with a domineering girlfriend,
Patty Di Marco (Mamie Parris). Dewey’s
months behind in his share of the rent, and Patty demands that Ned kick him
out. Patty goes off to work and Ned’s
out, too, when Dewey answers a phone call for Ned. It’s the exclusive Horace Green school in need
of a substitute teacher for the rest of the term. Needing money and a job, Dewey pretends to be
Ned and accepts a job as a fifth-grade teacher at the snobbish private school.
Of course, Dewey arrives late (and hung-over) and finds
Principal Rosalie Mullins (Jenn Gambatese) anxiously waiting for him (“Here at
Horace Green”). Uptight Ms. Mullins
hardly notices Dewey’s unpreparedness, slovenly attire, or physical state as
she ushers him into his classroom. He promptly
declares permanent recess, much to the disbelief and consternation of the
over-achieving pupils, as he stretches out on the desk for a bit of recovery
time. When he happens on the students’
music class and recognizes their talent, he forms a plan to realize his dreams
of rock stardom. The sub forms a rock
band with his 10-year-olds in an effort to win the prize money (and spotlight) offered
by the Battle of the Bands competition—out of which he was cheated when his old
combo dumped him.
Obviously, Dewey has to do this in secret because Ms.
Mullins and the children’s parents, who all have expectations for and demands
on their offspring, would clearly disapprove and shut him down. Needless to say, though, the students, after
some hesitation, take to the idea wholeheartedly—though Dewey has to convince
one or two that forming a rock band is an educational benefit, or even a good
idea. He hands out band assignments to
musicians (Zack on electric guitar – Brandon Niederauer, Katie on bass – Evie
Dolan, Lawrence on keyboard – Diego Lucano, and Freddy on drums – Raghav
Mehrotra), singers (Shonelle – Gianna Harris, Marcy – Carly Gendell), back-up
dancers/roadies (Madison – Ava Della Pietra, Sophie – Gabby Gutierrez), a
manager (bossy, gold star-craving Summer – Isabella Russo), a lighting techie
(Mason – Gavin Kim). a stylist (the Streisand-adoring, Vogue-reading Billy – Luca Padovan), and a security chief (James –
Jersey Sullivan) who’s job it is to warn the class when Ms. Mullins or one of
the teachers heads their way. (In an
amusing—and serendipitous—bit, Summer, who’s a terrible singer, auditions as a
back-up vocalist by croaking her way through Lloyd Webber’s “Memory” from Cats, which originally ran for 18 years
at the Winter Garden and is now in revival at the Neil Simon. The song was used in the same moment in the
movie, but takes on special significance in the adaptation.)
When Tomika (Bobbi MacKenzie), the shy new girl who’d been
silent and isolated till now, reveals that she’s a talented singer (with a
spectacular rendition of “Amazing Grace” worthy of Vy Higginsen’s Gospel for
Teens Choir), she, too, joins the combo; “You’re in the Band” iterates the
class’s—and the play’s—point and becomes a catch phrase for acceptance and
belonging. (As in the movie, the young
band members really play their instruments, sing, and dance as well as act—as a
pre-curtain announcement recorded by none other than Lloyd Webber himself
assures us. There’s also a pit orchestra
of eight that supplements the on-stage combo for the non-band numbers.) Dewey and his anti-establishment anarchism
(“Stick It to the Man” is a signature song for Dewey and the new band) soon
have a noticeable effect on the fifth-graders’ self-assurance. (Many reviewers noted the irony of this theme
in a play written and composed by two millionaire life peers—Lord Lloyd-Webber of
Sydmonton and Lord Fellowes of West Stafford are both barons—who sit in the
House of Lords as Tories, the very embodiments of “The Man”!) The Horace Green faculty is jealous of
Dewey’s unconventional success (“Faculty Quadrille”).
At home after school, each of the young band members shows us
the difficulties each has relating to his or her parents, none of whom really
listens to their children (“If Only You Would Listen”). (This is the one area of the plot that’s been
expanded from the movie: we learn more of the pupils’ family lives.) In order to secure permission to take the
students on a “field trip,” Dewey, having learned that Ms. Mullins was once a
Stevie Nicks fan, asks her for a drink at a road house where she reveals what’s
under her tight-ass exterior (“Where Did the Rock Go?”). Back at Dewey’s apartment, Ned and Patty have
opened the mail and found a check from Horace Green made out to Ned. After Patty leaves, Dewey comes clean but
makes Ned promise not to tell his girlfriend.
At school the next day, Zack plays the class a song he’s
written (“School of Rock”) and Dewey is so impressed with Zack’s talent, he
asks Zack to teach it to the band. There’s
a near-crisis on Parents’ Night when the pupils’ parents discover what the kids
have been spending their time on, but Dewey charms them—with a lie, to be sure,
but they buy it (“Math Is a Wonderful Thing”).
But just as Dewey navigates this predicament, Ned and Patty burst in
and, Patty having gotten the truth out of pussy-whipped Ned, expose Dewey. In the ensuing chaos, the students
and Dewey escape Horace Green, but Dewey’s so dismayed he retreats to his
darkened room until the students explain how much he’s meant to them (reprise
of “If Only You Would Listen”). In the
end, of course, the School of Rock, the name the fifth-graders chose for their
group, manages to make it to the theater.
In a slight twist, they don’t actually win the competition—No
Vacancy, Dewey’s old band, does—but School of Rock does win the hearts of the spectators—including the previously
skeptical parents—who demand an encore from the mini-rockers (significantly, a
reprise of “Stick It to the Man”). Dewey
explains to the kids that winning isn’t the important thing because together
they accomplished something more significant.
They beat “The Man”—the one who makes and enforces all the rules.
Back at Horace Green, following the Battle of the Bands
(which is really the dramatic conclusion of the play), Ms. Mullins, who’s the
children’s actual music teacher, combines some heavy rock licks with her classical
singing (“Queen of the Night” from Mozart’s Magic
Flute), signaling that things are in for a change at the school—all due to
the School of Rock and Dewey’s influence.
School of Rock is fun—the little kid
musicians are fantastic!—but I have some significant quibbles. One is
with the sound system, which muddled the singing so badly neither my cousin nor
I could decipher Slater’s lyrics. Even the non-rock numbers—more-or-less
regular theater songs—were blurred. I’ll
get to the other issues in a bit, when I cover the show in more detail, but the
music is significant because one of the major differences between Linklater and
White’s movie and the Fellowes-Lloyd Webber-Slater stage musical is in the score. Where the movie used mostly covers of rock
songs, the play has original songs whose lyrics impact the plot and
characters. (Four songs are reprised
from the film: “Edge of Seventeen” by Stevie Nicks; “School of Rock,” aka “Teacher’s Pet,” by Mike White and
Sammy James, Jr.; “In the End of Time” by Jack Black and Warren Fitzgerald; and
“Math Is a Wonderful Thing” by Black and White.
James is a member of Mooney Suzuki, a garage rock band featured in the film;
Fitzgerald is a punk guitarist.)
In case no one else spots it, if Harold Hill played an
instrument instead of just selling them, and if he were a would-be musician
instead of a huckster salesman, School of
Rock would be The Music Man—as
long as the music’s rock and not Sousa marches.
(Principal Mullins would be Marian the Librarian and Lawrence, the unconfident
keyboardist, would be young Winthrop with the lisp.) I don’t know if screenwriter White, filmmaker
Linklater, or stage adapter Lloyd Webber considered this or if its just a
universal tale, but the parallels are pretty hard to overlook. And that’s where my second quibble comes
in. The apparent point of the
show seems to be that if you let your kids be rock musicians, they’ll
be great, even of they never learn anything else in school.
Of course, that’s bogus—but if you take the play seriously, that’s
what it says. (Dewey delivers a very heartfelt speech to the parents
making that point, and it’s not treated as a joke. In fact, the play
turns on this scene. You have to believe
that the whole play takes place in an alternate universe to overlook that and
just see it as a charming fantasy.)
Oh, well, as some great philosopher once said: We
don’t need no education! (He also said: Teachers leave them kids alone, another aspect of the play’s
philosophy.)
There are other essential problems here as well. While Blum is a worthy stand-in for
Brightman, his Dewey isn’t really loveable the way the character should be to
make the play soar. In fact, he’s
pitiful—and that’s the way the character’s written and directed, not just the
way Blum comes off. Now, as I said, I’m
not a fan of Black’s, so the movie didn’t work for me in that way, either, but
I’m enough of a dramaturg to be able to analyze the performance text to see
that that’s what’s supposed to—or what needs to—occur for this story to take
off. The result of the lack of this
quality in the anarchic, slovenly, loud-mouthed Dewey is that his message
begins to seem potentially dangerous. He
comes close to the Pied Piper luring Hamelin’s children into the cave. (Indeed, David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter dubbed him “the
renegade pied piper of bad-assery.”) He’s
teaching the kids to be sneaky, dishonest, disrespectful, and defiant (for
example, one lyric from “Time to Play,” a song Summer and the fifth-graders
sing, is “Look rebellious, act more crude / Bring your best bad attitude”), which
is only good if the authority figures like Ms. Mullins and the parents are
actually venal (think Nazi prison guards and authoritarian dictators). But they’re not. Horace Green may be snobbish and hidebound,
but it’s not Animal Farm (it’s also
not Matilda or Annie). The parents don’t
listen, but the family lives aren’t The
Great Santini or Mommie Dearest. What’s Dewey up to? Starting a cult?
(By the way, the parents are another small thing that
bothers me. In an entire fifth-grade
class, every single parent suffers from the same shortsightedness and inattentiveness
to his or her child? Not one ’rent pays
attention? And while I’m at it, this is
a whole class of musical prodigies?
Really? What are the chances of that?
I guess we are in that
alternate universe.)
And if we presume that somehow Dewey is redeemed in the end
by his encounter with the kids or maybe the reborn Ms. Mullins, that doesn’t
happen, either. (Actually, he goes into
this gig for his own selfish purposes.
Like Professor Hill, Dewey only pretends to care about the children—until
he sort of comes around near the end.)
When Dewey’s exposed for a fraud and an imposter, he escapes punishment
because Mullins tells a lie to cover for him.
(And Patty—who, granted, is a harridan—is the one who’s threatened with
legal consequences. Even though she’s
actually right about Dewey, she’s made to be the heavy of School of Rock ) Why does he
deserve this outcome? Because the band
kids capture everyone’s heart—not by saving a baby from drowning, the theater
from burning down, or the school from closing, but by being good at playing
rock music. Wait, let me amend that: by
being 10-year-olds who are good at
playing rock music. In School’s Brigadoon universe, this is apparently the highest of human
aspirations.
(I think you’re getting an idea why I didn’t figure I’d buy
a ticket for School of Rock. I have the wrong temperament for it.)
Let me repeat, however, what I said at the start of my
assessment: School of Rock is fun. Despite what may seem harsh criticism, I did
enjoy the performance overall. It’ll
never go down on my list of best-ever theater experiences, but it was far from
one the worst. Blum’s performance was
fine, but what really puts School of Rock
– The Musical over the top as a piece of musical theater are the 13 band
members. No matter how well Dewey’s
performed, no matter how good Fellowes book is, and even no matter how tuneful
Lloyd Webber and Slater’s score is, it’s the performances, both the acting and
the playing, provided by the pre-teen members of the cast that sets this
movical above the run-of-the-mill. (I
haven’t seen Matilda, but I’ve heard
those youngsters are even more astounding—but I can’t make a comparison.)
The members of Dewey’s fifth-grade School of Rock are a
mixed group now, some from the opening cast and some replacements; at the mat I
saw, there were even a couple of understudy/standbys on stage. Nonetheless, they're by far the best things
in the whole show, both as characters (Isabella Russo’s Summer is deliciously
bossy, Diego Lucano is touchingly insecure
as Lawrence, and despite the stereotypicality of the character as written,
Billy is compellingly determined in Luca Padovan’s hands) and rockers. (I’d like to think that in the real world, in
an ironic reversal, School of Rock would have beaten No Vacancy in the Battle
of the Bands. Lloyd Webber’s music and
Slater’s words are pretty derivative—it’s one of the problems that turned me
off Lloyd Webber years ago—but “School of Rock” and “Stick It to the Man” are
both more interesting pieces of music than “I’m Too Hot for You” and the kids’
musical staging was more fun than No Vacancy’s been-there-done-that
posing! I’m just sayin’.)
The acting of the adults is a different matter. With children, I think, it doesn’t matter if
the roles are written as clichés and stereotypes because I don’t think that
registers with really young actors. They
just commit to what the playwright and director give them and go for it. As Matthew Murray of the website Talkin’ Broadway explained it, they do “exactly
what all great musical theatre actors do: transcending the falseness of their
surroundings to create a new and better reality through nothing more than their
impeccably honed and applied talents.”
It’s part of the childlike quality actors try to retain—believing fully
in what they’re doing in the moment.
It’s acting as playacting, and the closer the actor is to childhood, the
stronger that impulse is. But adult pros
lose more and more of that the more experienced they get and they have to work
at getting it back. They’ve been around
long enough to recognize stereotypes and stock characters and it’s harder for
them to play them truthfully without signaling what they feel. In School
of Rock, the adult characters are
in such a category and for the most part, the actors don’t or can’t disguise
that or play though it. The parents and
teachers (played by the same corps with doubling: Steven Booth, Natalie Charle
Ellis, Josh Tower, Michael Hartney, John Hemphill, Merritt David Janes, Jaygee
Macapugay, et al.) certainly don’t add anything to their characterizations
beyond the caricatures Fellowes wrote for them.
They follow their graphs faithfully, but never rise above
cartoons—sort of like the grown-ups in a Peanuts animation.
I’ve had my say about Blum’s Dewey (and, from the
opening-night reviews I read, the same holds true for Alex Brightman, so it’s
apparently not entirely the actor’s responsibility): he doesn’t turn Dewey from
an unlikeable slob into a charming and child-like rebel. But Jenn Gambatese manages to make the
transition with Rosalie Mullins. In the
opening scenes, she’s the classic tight-ass, even costumed with glasses and a
hair-bun. In the bar scene with Dewey,
however, when she almost literally lets her hair down (now, that would be a cliché) and lets her
inner Stevie Nicks loose, we get a peek at a Roz that’s genuine and
personable. Her little speech about how
she hates the social and academic politics of Horace Green that’s the
foundation of her job may be a little too on-the-nose dramatically, but it
apparently gives Gambatese enough fuel to take her into a more human
characterization and it’s even possible to see her fall a little under Dewey’s
spell at that moment. (It’s a tad
incredible, but that’s because Blum doesn’t make the concomitant shift in Dewey
that makes him loveable—but that’s hardly Gambatese’s fault.) When it comes time for Ms. Mullins to release
the fifth-graders for their “field trip” and then, more momentously, for her to
lie to save Dewey, it’s almost justified by her left dogleg after her Fleetwood
Mac turn.
Director Connor seems to have worked better (or perhaps just
more) with the children than with the adults, and he achieves more with them as
a result. Most of School of Rock is staged perfunctorily, but the young wannabe
rockers get the best moves. Hunter’s
dances, too, are less than sparkling except for the children, though their
numbers tend to be repetitive (and even perhaps derivative) in their pogo-stick
jumping movements that look a lot like the kids in Matilda in that show’s commercials.
Anna Louizos’s sets and costumes are fine (her get-ups for Dewey’s
grunge-wear couldn’t be . . . well, grungier), with mostly minimal scenery to
allow room for movement (except Dewey’s classroom where shifting desks and
furniture around to disguise what he’s up to is part of the play’s performance
text). The three rows of sliding panels
that make up the detailed back walls of various rooms work well here, and
re-jiggering the pupils’ school uniforms for their band costumes (and giving
Dewey an adult version for the Battle of the Bands bit) is, if not inspired,
then just this side of kinky. (Blum, in
his knee socks and high-tops, looks like an off-kilter scout leader in his
maroon plaid shorts and Horace Green blazer.
There should be a prize for the most disturbing costume at the
contest. I wonder what stylist Billy was
thinking . . . .)
Natasha Katz’s lighting is well-conceived, from the under-lit atmosphere
of Dewey’s bedroom, where the curtains are probably never opened, to the
institutional blandness of the prep school hallways, to the rock-concert LED glare
of the Battle of the Bands (which caught me right in the eye—but never mind). The musical direction of Darren Ledbetter
works perfectly well for Lloyd Webber’s orchestrations, especially in the
faux-rock numbers, but I’ve already said my piece about the sound design of
Mick Potter (which is why I have nothing to say about Slater’s lyrics). Since I feel the musical is a showcase for
the ’tween band, all the production elements are really just eyewash for those
moments anyway, so as long as they don’t get in the way, they’re perfect for
this production.
The press coverage of School
of Rock – The Musical was immense. Show-Score tallied 60 reviews, including
out-of-town papers (Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune) and even abroad (London’s Telegraph), giving the movical an average score of 74. The site reported that School of Rock got 75% positive notices against 3% negative ones
and 22% mixed reviews. (My round-up will cover 33 press outlets, some
different from Show-Score’s.) The one aspect of the show which united
almost all the reviews was the nearly unanimous praise for and delight in the
performances of the 13 children who play the members of the School of Rock combo.
From the highest scoring to the lowest rated notice, not one reviewer
dissed those kids. (As it happens, I saw then-12-year-old Niederauer, who plays
lead-guitarist Zack, on Stephen Colbert’s Late
Show last November and his musicianship was indeed remarkable.)
Among the dailies, the highest Show-Score rating (85) went to
Matt Windman’s am New York review, in
which the review-writer called School of
Rock “highly enjoyable and heartwarming” with music that’s “occasionally
serviceable and sappy” but “contains [Lloyd Webber’s] best music in a very long
time, bursting with excitement more often than not.” Windman made a
special point of stating, “The dozen or so children are wildly talented and
absolutely adorable. I dare you not to
smile as they stomp around and chant that they will ‘stick it to the man.’” In the shadow of the blockbuster of last
season, Hamilton, School isn’t “a game-changer,” the amNY writer offered, “but . . . it is a
solid, well-structured musical comedy.” (Windman
also caught that School of Rock is “a
modern version of ‘The Music Man.’”) With
a “Bottom Line” of “The kids are definitely all right in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
enjoyable show,” Linda Winer’s Newsday review
labeled the movical “high-energy, enjoyable, [and] unrelentingly
eager-to-please.” The production, Winer
asserted, “is as slick and sure of itself as if it had been running at the
Winter Garden Theatre since Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats’ closed 15 years ago.” The pre-teen musicians are “all terrific,”
declared Winer, and Slater’s “easygoing lyrics” are set to a “hard-rocking and
comfortable” score by Lloyd Webber.
In the New York Times,
Ben Brantley described School of Rock as
Lloyd Webber’s “friskiest [show] in decades” and “is about as easygoing as a
show can be that threatens to break your eardrums.” Brantley reported that “for its first half,
at least, [School of Rock] charmingly
walks the line between the cute and the precious, the sentimental and the
saccharine.” Brantley cautioned,
however, that “in the more lazily formulaic second act . . ., you can taste
glucose in the air.” The adaptation’s
creative team “translates [the film’s] sensibility into Broadway-ese with
surprising fluency.” In sum, the Timesman
declared that “‘Rock’ is surprisingly easy to swallow, in large part because
everyone involved seems to be having such a fine time,” adding that “family
audiences should be grateful for a Lloyd Webber show that only wants to have
fun and hopes that you do, too.” The New York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli pointed out that every part of the show except
one is “on the plot’s outskirts” because “the story is centered on the
relationship between the children and Dewey.”
Vincentelli, though, did complain of the play’s sexism since the “adult
women are either straight-laced or shrewish, while the little girls are stuck
in rock’s traditional parts.” The
musical’s “whole heap of new tunes by Andrew Lloyd Webber,” says the Post reviewer, are his “catchiest tunes
in years.”
The unsigned Daily
News review (which Show-Score identifies as Joe
Dziemianowicz’s) described School of Rock
as a “wildly energetic but uneven show” made up of “the great and
fantastical stuff” of Broadway musicals.
The News review-writer named a
few songs that “jolts [sic] the show
awake,” then complained that “they’re exceptions. Most of the new songs tend to be just okay at
best.” The songs, Dziemianowicz said,
feel “generic” and at many points, “the music is just too loud for its own
good, suppressing what may be decent lyrics under amplified purple haze.” Overall, the Newsman complained, “The
show wants to rock your socks off, but it just moves in fits and starts and
feels labored” and director Connor’s “staging is inconsistent.” Still, the “young actors/musicians all kick
axe,” but it’s “a show that can’t get out of its own way—or add much to the
classic movie.” In the U.S. edition of
London’s Guardian, Alexis Soloski labeled
the movical a “perfectly pleasant, perfectly innocuous new musical,” though she
warned that early scenes “are wholly predictable” and “musical numbers are
unhappily anodyne.” Then Soloski added,
“But things perk up when the younger cast members finally get a chance to sing
and play.” She explained: “The children
are universally adorable and several of them are staggeringly accomplished
musicians. It is an absolute treat to
hear them.” Soloski complained, however,
that Lloyd Webber’s songs don’t really rock: “any hard electric edges have been
sanded away.” School of Rock – The Musical, the Guardian reviewer concluded, “wants to please and please it does. But rock it doesn’t.”
Robert Feldberg of the Bergen County, New Jersey, Record called School “old-fashioned and predictable” in a review entitled “Remember
when people thought rock-and-roll would save the world?” He responded to his own question by
asserting, “That mantra is the ringingly dated message of ‘School of Rock,’ a
throwback musical in more ways than one.”
Then, however, Feldberg added, “But it’s also fun, demonstrating how
entertaining a formulaic evening, smartly executed, can be.” “Directed . . . at a rapid pace,” School of Rock has “a strong, if simple,
story . . ., apt songs . . ., [and] lively performances.” With “all-around theater know-how, the show
is a tribute to professionalism,” affirmed the Record review-writer. Feldberg
concluded that School of Rock “is
meant to be a feel-good musical, and, despite its manipulativeness and
cartoonish characters, it largely succeeds.”
On NJ.com, Christopher Kelly of the Newark Star-Ledger predicted that the “faithful-bordering-on-slavish
adaptation of the” movie “will win no prizes for originality.” Labeling the movical a “big, noisy musical,”
Kelly asserted that it “transposes virtually every scene from the film onto the
stage.” The Star-Ledger reviewer found that the music and lyrics “are a
forgettable pastiche of contemporary Top 40 pop-rock,” then reported that School of Rock “nevertheless keeps a
smile plastered on your face” because “there can be no denying the verve and
indomitable energy of the young cast.” Connor
and Fellowes “do a fine job moving the story along at a pleasant clip”;
however, “the real stars of this show are the thirteen children who play the
members of Dewey’s class, pint-sized forces of nature who sing, dance and play
instruments.” Kelly’s last thought was
that spectators
could wish that choreographer
JoAnn M. Hunter had come up with something more inventive than the stomp-heavy
moves so reminiscent of the dance numbers in “Matilda.” You could also complain
that the two main female parts . . . are such tired, rhymes-with-witch clichés. Or you could sit back and enjoy a musical
that reminds us that “family-f[riend]ly entertainment” need not also be an
insult to a grown-up’s intelligence and good taste. “School of Rock” may not be one for the
history books, but it nonetheless has plenty of valuable lessons to
teach.
The Wall Street
Journal’s Terry Teachout opened his notice with a declaration:
The commodity musical, that
parasitical genre in which Hollywood hits of the relatively recent past are
repurposed for profit by turning them into paint-by-the-numbers big-budget
Broadway shows, is the worst thing to happen to American musical comedy since
maybe ever.
Then he conceded that “there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be
theoretically possible to write a good commodity musical,” and grudgingly
allowed, “Turning ‘School of Rock’ into a musical isn’t the worst idea in the
world.” In fact, he affirmed that “if
you need a safe, undemanding show to take your baby-boom parents to see over
the holidays, it’ll do perfectly fine—but if that sounds like lukewarm praise,
it is.” Teachout reported that “Fellowes’s
version isn’t funny” and the Lloyd Webber-Slater songs, except “Stick It to the
Man,” which “is catchy, fun and extremely well staged by” choreographer Hunter,
“are filler, synthetic and innocuous.” The WSJ
reviewer also complained, “The music is loud but not ear-shreddingly so, though
it’s impossible to hear the lyrics when the pit band cranks up.” As for the “good stuff,” Teachout said only:
“The kids are absolutely wonderful.” His
final comment?
I’ve seen worse and so have you,
and if that’s enough to get you to spring for a pair of $145 tickets to “School
of Rock,” go for it. Just be forewarned:
This is the kind of musical that sends you home wanting to rent the movie. I don’t know about you, but that’s not why I
go to the theater.
Brendan Lemon of the U.S. edition of the Financial Times, another wag on the
theater beat, mused:
“Are you not entertained?” bellows
Russell Crowe at the arena in the 2000 movie Gladiator. All during School of Rock, Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s Colisseum-loud [sic] musical . . ., I kept asking myself the same question. Like the victims of those enslaved warriors, I
felt pummelled [sic] by the
experience.
He, too, conceded that “the tremendously talented children
in this cast perform with an intensity that only a churl could deny”; this is
where the “show’s chief pleasures reside.”
Still, Lemon observed, “None of the new songs created by Lloyd Webber
and Glenn Slater, his lyricist, do much to enhance the existing tunes from the
source material” even if the show “has been energetically directed.” Fellowes’s book “honours the movie’s
storyline with a Dowager’s dutifulness,” though “the transitions are abrupt and
the characters’ backgrounds a little sketchy.”
Elysa Gardner started right in by asking in USA Today: “How could you possibly
resist them, these fresh, sunny faces and sweet pre-pubescent voices that
dominate the cast of School of Rock – The Musical?” Gardner reported that Lloyd
Webber “happily, has approached the project with a healthy sense of humor,
though he and lyricist Glenn Slater also provide a few
earnest ballads.” Repeating that “it’s
the younger cast members who engage us most,” Gardner concluded that “you’ll
root for all of them, and have a grand time doing so.”
The New Yorker’s
“Goings On About Town” column declared that School
of Rock “goes straight for the pleasure center” and that the Lloyd
Webber-Slater songs “really do rock.”
(The New Yorker reviewer was
another who saw “a latter-day Harold Hill” in Dewey Finn.) The columnist concluded by pointing out, “But
the chief triumph of Laurence Connor’s production is the child actors, who give
winning, distinctive performances.” Also
making comparisons with Meredith Willson’s classic Music Man, Jesse Green remarked in New York magazine, “If you are willing to overlook trite sentiments
like” those expressed in the lyric “Wreck your room and rip your jeans / and
show ’em what rebellion means” (from “Stick It to the Man”), School of Rock “has a fair amount to
offer: . . . a clean, swift staging by Laurence Connor; and, for those who like
it, temporary deafness.” Green confirmed,
though, “The big gimmick is of course the kids,” whom he labeled “terrific” (and,
the man from New York assured us, “not
overly adorable”) even if each “has a predictable arc and a backstory full of
clichés” that’s “completely pro forma and signboarded like crazy.” The adults, said Green, are saddled with the
need to “turn salesmanship into character,” but “Fellowes’s book doesn’t allow
it, offering no psychology, only traits.”
Comparing the score to that of “the best musical comedies,” Green
asserted, “But School of Rock, like many rock musicals, has a
problem availing itself of the genre’s full power, because reasonably authentic
rock of the type imitated here, circa 1975, has such a limited vocabulary.” Slater’s lyrics,” when they can be heard, are
clean and on point,” but Lloyd Webber “is not, in any case, a real rock
composer” and his music “grabs whatever tropes seem handy” for the moment at
hand. But, Green proclaimed, “The
problem is what the point is”:
If Dewey represents the anarchic
spirit of rock, and we are meant to cheer when he gets the kids to share that
spirit, do we suddenly not notice that he’s, well, a loser? . . . . Looked at squarely, this is a show about a
poseur, not just liberating but undermining everyone around him. (The musical’s villain is his roommate’s
girlfriend, who is punished for the crime of wanting him to pay his rent by
being turned into a hideous nightmare bitch.)
“There is [a] tremendous amount of talent . . . behind School
of Rock," asserted Jesse Oxfeld in Entertainment
Weekly.
And yet, without a doubt and by a
long shot, the best things on the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre are the
dozen or so unknown kids who steal the show . . . . They bring to what might
otherwise be a dutiful screen-to-stage retread an inspiring jolt of energy,
joy, whimsy, and—do the kids still say this?—mad skillz.
“School of Rock isn’t perfect,” the EW reviewer observed, but Lloyd Webber “has
written a fun, catchy, rock-ish score,” reported Oxfeld, continuing that “when
those kids . . . take the stage, School of Rock is a delight.” Time
Out New York’s David Cote said the
adaptation from film to stage by the “unlikely creative team” of School “successfully execute such a
smart transfer,” even if those who saw the movie will know what to expect. “It worked for the movie, and wow, does it
work on Broadway,” declared Cote. School of Rock is “one tight, well-built
show,” according to the man from TONY;
having “absorbed the diverse lessons of Rent, Spring Awakening and Matilda,” it “passes them on to a new
generation.” He asserted, “You’d have to
have zero sense of humor about pop to not enjoy Webber’s jaunty pastiche score.”
In the Hollywood
Reporter, David Rooney, labeling School
of Rock “disarming,” asserted that “the show knows full well that its prime
asset is the cast of ridiculously talented kids.” Still, Rooney reported, “In terms of
screen-to-stage remakes, this is neither the most imaginative nor the most
pedestrian of them.” The HR reviewer said that “the musical is
funny and endearing for much the same reasons as the movie,” but went on, “Where
it distinguishes itself is in providing the sheer unalloyed pleasure of being
in the same physical space as the baker’s dozen preteen stars.” While extolling Lloyd Webber’s “commercial
instincts,” Rooney found that “his songs are ersatz rock at best, and more
often efficient than inspired, while Slater’s lyrics tend to express feelings
rather than advance the action.” Connor’s
direction, the review-writer felt, “is not always the most elegant,” but the
production design is “first-rate.” In
conclusion, Rooney stated, “Ultimately, what makes this show a crowd-pleaser is
the generosity of spirit.” Variety’s Marilyn Stasio, describing School of Rock as “an exuberant feel-good
musical,” declared, “Andrew Lloyd Webber unleashed his inner child to write”
the movical, as he and his creative colleagues “are clearly child-friendly.” The only change Stasio found between the
Lloyd Webber-Fellowes-Slater stage adaptation and the film was that the
creators managed “to lay on the energetic rock songs” of the new score.
David Roberts called School
of Rock a “powerhouse musical” on Theatre
Reviews Limited and said it “reflects significantly ‘what and how we are
now’ and moves forward in creative ways to address significant cultural and—perhaps
surprisingly—political issues,” referencing the late Elizabeth Swados. Roberts added that Dewey’s “antics in the
classroom are over-the-top joy to watch and hear” and the four musicians at the
center of the band “will make the audience fall back into their seats in awe at
the craft of these young musicians.” The
TRL blogger continued, “The
electrifying twenty-eight (some reprised) songs literally rock the walls of the
iconic Winter Garden Theatre.” Connor’s
direction is “galvanizing,” the cast is “uniformly excellent,” and Fellowes’s
book “is refreshing.” Roberts concluded,
“‘School of Rock – The Musical’ succeeds because audience members can so easily
identify with its characters and connect to their conflicts.”
On Theater Pizzazz,
Sandi Durell stated, like so many of her peers, that School is “all about the fabulous talented kids and louder than
loud music.” She warned, though, “You
may not be able to make out all the lyrics, and may find some of the tunes
repetitive but that’s okay, it’s all about the hot, high energy.” Nonetheless, “Anna Louizos’ fine eye designs
the detailed sets and costumes; Natasha Katz’[s] first rate lighting adds the
rock stadium quality, while choreographer JoAnn M. Hunter moves [the cast] all
around like supple chess pieces.” The TP reviewer also felt that director
Laurence Connor “stirs ‘em up and voila . . . you’ve got a hot ‘School of
Rock’ blend of audience pleasers.” Calling much of Lloyd Webber’s hard-rock
score “uninspired” on Theatre’s Leiter Side, Samuel L. Leiter acknowledged
that under the “enthusiastic” direction of Connor, the stage musical, with a
plot “offering some additional material” by Fellowes, has “its success . . .
practically guaranteed.” Leiter pronounced the story “a fairy tale,” but
asserted that “you believe and you accept [it] because it’s presented with a
just enough skill and charm to make it irresistible. In fact, you’ll probably even wipe away a
happy tear or two.” While he praised the work of the design team, Leiter
concluded that it’s the “extraordinarily talented kids” who make “a B-minus
show into an A-minus one.” CurtainUp’s
Elyse Sommer dismissed School as “not . . . big on originality, depth or
high art” but acknowledged (like so many others) that the “kids are
irresistible.” The production, centering
on the “super talented” ‘tween band members, is “smoothly directed,” but Sommer
warned, “Forget about looking for any especially deep or controversial themes”
since “this really isn’t a message musical.”
In the final analysis, “School of Rock [remains] strictly
what it is—a not to be taken seriously hard rocking, feel good romp.”
On NY Theatre
Guide, Marc Miller, while acknowledging the connection to The Music Man
like some of his colleagues, also compared School with other recent
musicals centering on children and observed, “You’ve seen a lot of it already”—although
“School of Rock has its share of fun.” Miller asserted that the movical’s creative
team “are out only to entertain, logic and character development be damned. On a ground-floor level, they succeed.” Fellowes, this cyber reviewer complained, “knows
how to land a laugh and where to introduce sentiment and conflict,” but doesn’t
“probe beneath the surface.” The tease
of the musical scene in which the children sing about the inattentiveness of
their parents made Miller want “to know more about these parent-kid conflicts
and how they’d be resolved. But they’re
resolved in the most pat way imaginable.”
There’s “not much depth,” but the “surface-skimming along the way” is
“enjoyable.” The score, he reported, is
Lloyd Webber’s “friskiest in years” and the “lyrics are well crafted and
clever, when you can hear them.” Miller
found that “more than half the words are distorted beyond intelligibility or
drowned out by the ear-splitting kid rockers.”
He lauded the designers, but Connnor’s “direction is more efficient than
inspired.” Despite its assets, however,
“there’s an unadventurous carefulness to School of Rock’s approach that
somewhat undercuts what little it’s trying to say.”
Michael Dale of Broadway
World labeled School of Rock an
“enthralling, high-energy kickass new hard-rockin’ musical” with a “solid set
of lyrics, the funny and sincerely touching book . . . and a top flight cast.” The result, said Dale, “is a big, beautiful
blast of musical comedy from start to finish.”
(Instead of The Music Man, the
oldie to which Dale likened School
was “basically THE SOUND OF MUSIC without the Nazis.”) The BWW
review-writer acknowledged that the “crisp production is enhanced by Anna
Louizos[‘s] fluidly moving set” and, despite some plot moments “that defy
logic” and some “clichéd” small roles, “the musical’s exuberant score and
meaningful theme . . . glosses over any weak spots.” Dale’s conclusion was: “School of Rock is a great night out.” Suggesting that a theatergoer’s expectations for
a show with child actors might be “way too high” and that such a show would be
“courting disaster,” Talkin’ Broadway’s
Matthew Murray assured us that “those expectations aren’t just met, they’re
exceeded—by several orders of magnitude.”
Of course, Murray went on to heap lavish praise on the work of the young
musicians and singers of School of Rock and
then moved on to state, “Lloyd Webber still knows how to craft and orchestrate
a rock melody, his tunes at once ultra-cool and searing hot.” Then Murray backed off a little: “Unfortunately,
whenever [Dewey] and his glittering charges aren’t center stage, School
of Rock satisfies considerably less” because, due to Fellowes’s book
and Connor’s staging, “all of the supporting characters are bloated and
unbelievable”; the TB reviewer
characterized them as “brain-dead stereotypes and dramatic one-dimensionality.”
The rest of the score, aside from the kids’ numbers, are “a series of lame
songs” and Murray demeaned the production design and choreography as “the
straightforward, at-face-value variety” that ends the evening as “one big, loud
question mark.” (Murray was another
reviewer who complained that “Mick Potter’s sound design tends to muddy lyrics
when lots of people are singing and playing at once.”) Still, in the end, he insisted, “Seeing [the
young performers] unleash all they have and then some is destined to be one of
the most scintillating joys of this Broadway season, and worth the price of
admission by itself.”
On TheaterScene, Victor
Gluck called School “delightful” and
“dynamic and exuberant,” and,
extolling the “fabulously talented” ‘tweens, Gluck asserted that School of
Rock “also makes spectacular use of its musical idioms as well as the
tremendous new talent.” The movical, he
reported, “will have [you] rooting for its hero quite soon and send you out at
the end feeling good about the underdog coming out on top.” Gluck’s final assessment is: “One of the most
satisfying shows of the season.” Zachary
Stewart of TheaterMania pronounced that “School of Rock is
cute and occasionally funny, but not any more than its source material, making
its onstage existence something of an extravagant ‘meh.’” Calling the play a “whimsically implausible
romp,” the TM reviewer characterized the Lloyd Webber score as “hit-or-miss
music . . ., considering that many of his songs resemble a cell phone ringtone:
electronic notes presented in a repetitive sequence.” Stewart reversed himself slightly, adding, “Still,
they’re often catchy and hard to forget.”
Fellowes’s adaption is “efficient,” reported Stewart, and Slater’s “lyrics
are adequate yet unremarkable, getting the job done with a minimal amount of
wit.” While he gave faint praise to
Connor’s staging, Louizos’s sets and costumes, and Katz’s lighting, he
complained about Potter’s sound design in which “lyrics and dialogue are often
lost.” “Luckily,” Stewart added, “School
of Rock has a supercharged cast to transform this leaden material into
musical-comedy gold,” even if it’s “an undeniably fun musical that is
nevertheless not particularly special.”
David Finkle reported on the Huffington Post that the saving grace of School of Rock is its “great finish,” which, “like just about every
other of the not abundant high points in this Lloyd Webber-ized School
of Rock, it involves the terrific young actors—several of them young
actor-musicians—working like cheerful demons.”
“Oh, yes, musical comedy aficionados,” HP’s First Nighter stressed, “it’s the non-voting-age players,
including the adorably proficient Isabella Russo as the band manager, who steal
this undertaking while the bigger names above and below the title hit wonky
notes on their figurative Fender guitars.”
As for Lloyd Webber’s score, Finkle thought that “his newest melodies
and riffs, which he orchestrated, conjure only Broadway-rock of the ’70s” and
that they “swiftly begin to sound alike”; he had a similar complaint about Hunter's
choreography. The production design is “more
than adequate,” said Finkle, but he had many nits to pick with Fellowes’s
book. Like so many of his peers, Finkle
asserted that it’s the “knee-high-to-grasshopper” band members who make School worth seeing, and “More power to
them,” the HP reviewer declared.
Calling School of Rock
a “pop song of a musical” on WNYC, a public radio outlet in New York City, Jennifer
Vanasco affirmed, “One thing you can say for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘School of
Rock – The Musical,’ now playing at the Winter Garden Theatre: the kids are
really, really charming. And talented. They play their own instruments and they
really rock out.” Vanasco felt, “It gets
off to a slow start, with too much set up, but then there’s a truly great scene”
when Dewey assembles the classroom band and the students “take up their instruments
with joy and ferocity.” The WNYC
reviewer objected, however, that “the sunny easiness of the story and the
cuteness of the kids is marred by two things”: “rampant gay stereotypes” of Luca
Padovan’s Billy and Tomika’s gay dads (Steven Booth and Michael Hartney) and Mamie
Parris’s Patty, “written as a one-noted witch.”
She concluded: “These flaws—and the very traditional staging and script—make
the show feel cynical, like it’s pandering to the audience’s worst
tendencies. If only it had been brave enough
to break out of its own musical theater box.”
On NY1, the all-news channel for Time Warner Cable subscribers in New
York City, Roma Torre declared “‘School Of Rock’ is a rock solid hit!” The story “is a fairy tale of course but it’s
an irresistible one” with Lloyd Webber’s score “his best in years” and a book
that “matches the film’s subversive humor with a human touch.” Connor’s direction is “flawless,” bringing “all
of the pieces . . . together in perfect harmony,” “aided immeasurably” by
Louizos’s “terrific scenic design.” The
play’s “secret weapon,” though, is the “[m]agnificent talents” of the ’tween
actors. School of Rock, Torre
concluded, “may not be groundbreaking, but as crowd-pleasing entertainment, it
doesn’t miss a beat.”
On WNBC television, the network outlet in New York City, Robert
Kahn declared right at the outset, “A dozen pint-sized and pitch-perfect
performers bring heart to” the new musical, “an otherwise workaday
screen-to-stage adaptation” with a “faithful, if prosaic book.” Outside of the young actor-musicians,
affirmed Kahn, “we tread familiar territory.”
Lloyd Webber’s songs “are a polarizing bunch,” with few that Kahn
predicted “will enjoy an afterlife”; the pre-teen characters “sometimes verge
on stock depictions” and the adults “fully cross the line”; and Ned and Patty,
though acted well, are “cartoons.” Kahn
warned, “You suspend disbelief to appreciate ‘School of Rock,’” which he
admitted “doesn’t particularly resonate for me, but I won’t soon forget the
feel-good vibe radiating off the talented young performers.” The Associated Press reviewer, Mark Kennedy (as
broadcast on WTOP radio in Washington, D.C.), labeled School of Rock a “sweet, well-constructed musical” with “a
wondrously rebellious spirit and a superb cast.” Kennedy reported, “A heartwarming story and a
stage full of pre-pubescent kids who know their way around an amp prove
irresistible” and Lloyd Webber, with Slater’s lyrics, “turns in some perfectly
solid mainstream rock-ish anthems.” The
AP reviewer noted that Fellowes has been “so faithful” to the screenplay that “you
may wonder why he even gets a credit,” but director Connor “leads a crisp,
snappy show.”
I don’t usually do this, but because the spread of notices
spanned nearly the entire range of Show-Score
ratings, I’m going to add some comments from the site’s highest-scoring review
(Front Row Center, 100) and its
lowest-scoring one (The Wrap,
30). Both of these are sites I don’t
customarily consult. FRC’s Michael Hillyer encouraged people who enjoyed the 2003 movie or like
rock music to rush to the Winter Garden box office because “you’re probably
gonna love School Of Rock, The Musical.”
Lloyd Webber, Fellowes, and Slater have “absolutely nailed” the transfer
from screen to stage and audiences “will enjoy the over-the-top decibel level
afforded by the live stage experience, as well as the face-shredding guitar
solos, gut-wrenching drum riffs and electric bass and keyboards wizardry that
punctuate this joyously unabashed celebration of heavy rock music.” Hillyer declared, “This is Lloyd Webber’s
best rock score in decades, there isn’t a weak song in the show, and the cast
is up to its demanding vocals as well.”
With praise for the young actor-musicians of School of Rock, the
reviewer for FRC also mentioned the designers. the adult actors, and the
“loving and tight control” of director Connor.
Hillyer concluded that “School Of Rock ought to be in session for
a long time to come.”
Robert Hofler
complained that Dewey in the play is “a total slob,” which is “different from being a messy free spirit,” as the
film’s main character is. Instead of the
“anarchic edge of comedy” portrayed by Jack Black, Hofler found “just a big
boorish thug.” The Wrapper also
found deficiencies in the portrayals of Ms. Mullins and Patty on stage in
contrast with the film counterparts. “Other
actors and another director might have made this ‘School’ better,” asserted
Hofler. “But then there’s the material
itself.” He affirmed, “What the musical
most needs is a complete overhaul for the stage; instead it gets Julian
Fellowes‘ faithful-to-a-fault adaptation.”
He gave Lloyd Webber and Slater wan praise for the score, dismissing the
“traditionally Broadway” numbers. (Hofler
cautioned against including “other composers’ music,” referring to some classic
pieces Lloyd Webber uses in the show. “It
is nice to go out humming Mozart,” he quipped.) His final comment was: “In ‘School of Rock,’
the parents eventually embrace their children’s newfound love of very loud and
not very good rock music. Most parents
in the audience, however, might wonder if Actors’ Equity has taken up a fund
for the many talented young performers on stage who . . . will require hearing
devices.”
The stage musical’s appeal is obviously aimed at families
with ‘tween kids; there were a lot of them in the Sunday matinee audience I
attended. (As I noted in my press
survey, the band kids took nearly all the reviews.) I presume that accounts for a few things
about this production. One, the play’s
less than 2½ hours long, quite short for a Broadway musical (most run from 2½
to 3 hours and even more). Two, the
Sunday matinees are at 1 p.m. and the evening show is at 6, both early by
traditional standards, presumably to get the families, especially the ones from
the ‘burbs, in and out early; the other mats are at 2, but the evening show on
Saturday after the mat is at 7:30, and so is Friday’s evening performance. Three, the other two evening shows are at 7, really
early for Broadway nowadays. Four, there
are three matinee performances a week: aside from the Saturday and Sunday
afternoon shows, there’s a 2 o’clock Wednesday mat as well. Five, there’s an evening performance on
Monday, the day theaters are traditionally dark on Broadway (switched for
Thursday at the Winter Garden), probably to entice theatergoers to midtown on
an evening when the rest of Broadway is quiet—easier parking and dining, not to
mention maneuvering around Times Square and catching a cab after the show.
All this suggests “family friendly” to me, especially if you
marry it to the kid-centric cast and plot and faux-rock score. I should caution would-be parental
attendees, however, that there are some aspects of School of Rock for which you
might want to be prepared. The No
Vacancy lead singer struts around stage Jagger-like with a bare chest and
tight, leather pants—not particularly threatening these days, I suppose—while
singing “I’m Too Hot for You.” There are
also some racially and sexually stereotyped references, though mild, that could
be seen as insulting in our PC society: the effeminate Billy and Tomika’s gay
dads are pretty much clichés and Dewey casually calls an Asian-American
character “Lucy Liu.” Dewey also tosses
out some mildly naughty language now and then—“douche bags” and being “pissed”—and
no one calls him on it. (The Guardian’s Soloski even quipped, “The
concession stand should really have smelling salts on hand for anyone who
believed that Fellowes could never script words like douche bags.”)
[A really interesting—and I’d
bet, fascinating—story to come out of School of Rock – The Musical would be the casting of the kid musicians. The talent search and auditions must have
been amazing, seeking out these beyond-talented youngsters with actual rock
chops. There has to be a Making of .
. ./Behind the Music documentary about
that waiting somewhere in the wings.
Anyone wanna get on that?]
