Every now and then a good, fun musical for the whole family comes along. ‘School of Rock’ is one of them.
‘School of Rock’ is important to the theatre because it introduces a new generation to stage performance. While the performers themselves ranged from children to adults, so did the audience.
The ‘School of Rock’ musical is based on the 2003 Jack Black movie of the same name. In 2013, Andrew Lloyd Webber set out to create the stage show version writing the music to Glenn Slater’s lyrics based on the book by Julian Fellowes.
The first production opened in December 2015 at Manhattan’s Winter Garden Theatre and had its UK premiere in the West End in 2016. Australia is the third country to see ‘School of Rock’. It opened in Melbourne at Her Majesty’s Theatre last night (9 November 2018).
Brent Hill and Amy Lehpamer own the show but credit goes to the kids of rock cast as the students. We had a preview of how good Zane Blumeris, who plays Zack is, about a month ago when Gene Simmons toured Australia. Zane joined Gene on stage in Melbourne and left Simmons with his tongue scrapping the sticky carpet.
Three groups of children play the students over various nights.
Amy Lehpamer, fresh from her role as Cynthia Weil in ‘Beautiful: The Musical’ makes for a very believable, yet somewhat flawed school principal Rosalie Mullins. Amy Lehpamer is one of the greatest stars of Australian stage right now. It doesn’t matter if she is starring in ‘Beautiful’, ‘Dusty’ or ‘The Sound of Music’, Amy becomes every character she plays.
Rosalie Mullins funniest part of the show is when Dewey uses her fandom of Stevie Nicks to manipulate her into allowing the children to attend ‘an excursion’ for the School of Rock talent quest. Stevie’s ‘Edge of Seventeen’ now has a whole new meaning I don’t think I’ll ever be able to erase from my mind.
The role of Dewey could be a benchmark role for Brent Hill. I’m not familiar with his previous roles. He shares a similar shape to Jack Black, who played Dewey in the movie, and that visual gave the audience a familiarity from the start. That helped. Dewey is a loser, a manipulator, but deep down a decent guy. It all comes together for him in the end (but again, this is theatre, anyone who tried this today in real life and was caught would be serving time in prison).
Dewey has some brilliant lines like “Would you tell Picasso to sell his guitars?” and when he tells the students he has a hangover and a student asks “doesn’t that mean you’re drunk?’ Dewey responds, “no, it means I was drunk yesterday”.
Political correctness aside, this is one funny and entertaining show. Given the changes in attitude since the movie debuted, there are a few inappropriate like when Dewey tells the parents the children “have touched me and I’ve touched them”. That line was funnier in 2003 than it is today, but we’ll let that one pass.
The original music replacing the original movie soundtrack works extremely well. Has Andrew Lloyd Webber even written a rock musical since ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’?
Do go and see ‘School of Rock’. Take your kids, take their grandparents. This is the musical for the whole family.
School of Rock is now on at Her Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne. It will head to Sydney then Brisbane in 2019.
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