Later in March I attended the Broadway tour of "Rock Of Ages" for my sister's birthday. The show proved to be very different...not your typical Broadway musical. It was rowdy, cheesy and sleazy...everything 1980's.
"back in the day if you had a dream, a fifth of jack, and a decent amount of hair there was nowhere else to be!"
"Rock of Ages"
"Rock of Ages," A Broadway jukebox musical spins the time machine dial back to the 1980s. It's a shamelessly silly and refreshingly self-amused ride for a good deal of the way. But it helps to have your nostalgia ticket punched in advance. If the power chords of "We Built This City" or "Don't Stop Believin' " don't ring at least some kind of bell, you may feel left out of the "Rock of Ages" party. The music, freely cut, spliced, reorchestrated and repurposed, is by several arena-rock titans of the decade.
Chris D'Arienzo's book, set on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, is intentionally lightweight, occasionally clever and sometimes lame. The charming Constantine Maroulis plays a shy aspiring rocker who falls in love with a fresh-faced girl from Kansas (the vocally vibrant Elicia MacKenzie). True love behaves according to form, by not running smooth. Meanwhile a nasty developer and his son (did they have to be German?) are trying to wipe out the nightclubs and strip joints and replace them with strip malls. The performers, working on high octane in Kelly Devine's blunt, hip-heavy choreography, regularly break the fourth wall and invade the house. A narrator ( Patrick Lewallen) wears out his welcome with commentary about the other characters and the musical they're all in. Peter Deiwick delights as the preening but insecure rock star Stacee Jaxx.
The show is full of gloriously awful hair and clothing. Teased, kinked, coiffed, brutally straightened or freely flowing, the tresses onstage are a wondrous phenomenon. So are the miniskirts, studded vests, the glam-rock and boy-band get-ups. You may get tired of the characters before you lose interest in how they look...
No comments:
Post a Comment