Rock of Ages is not about the plot. Really, at all. But it would have been nice to have been able to see any of the scenes that occurred stage right. Completely blind to them all. Second row mezzanine, all the way to the left, the first 3 tickets in, and all 3 of us couldn’t see a thing. Yet those tickets were sold to us at the booth (only at a 30% discount) as being full price seats. Ridiculous. Shameful. They should be ashamed of themselves. I feel absolutely taken advantage of and if I had somewhere to complain I would. But I don’t, so I’m doing it here.

But other than that the show is so much fun! Really, really stupid, but stupid in a way that made me giggle and scream and laugh and sing along and yell a lot. Very much my sense of humor. The show is completely self-referential, as in, “hey look at us, we’re doing a musical right now.” Very meta-theatrical without all the thinking.

It’s a jukebox musical featuring hair metal rock and roll from the ’80s, mainly. Plot involves just a small town girl livin’ in a lonely world….took the midnight train goin’ anywhere. You get the idea. Undiscovered rock star boy meets small town girl new to LA. They fall in love at the rock club at which they work. Evil German developers want to demolish the club and build a supermall. The good guys band together to save the club. Pretty stupid. But the plot just serves as a loose cohesive device to group together 2 acts of rock and roll and comedy. And it does rock. And it is funny. Really quite funny. The narrator character (who is also the manager of the rock club - I think) is so supremely over the top and breaks the 4th wall from beginning to end. Always entertaining. He’s like a gay Jack Black on crack. That rhymed. And a role like that - narrator, comedy guy, rock singer - also participated and LED most of the dance numbers. Normally a role like that would exit the stage and let the dancin’ girls take over, but this guys is a take-no-prisoners-I-can-do-anything- threat! His name is Mitchel Jarvis and he is great.

Playing the young boy is American Idol alum Constantine Maroulis, who is way better here than he was in The Wedding Singer. He really gives his all to the role, totally gets the silliness of what he’s doing and sells the comedy and vocals like a pro. I was really impressed. Unfortunately for me, Amy Spanger was OUT when we saw the show and we saw her understudy. I always say that the understudy is usually better than the star. Not the case here. I didn’t understand the choice of this person at all. She was totally bland and boring and not that pretty or good of a singer it was SO disappointing. Maybe Amy doesn’t like to be overshadowed by her understudy. There absolutely nothing charming about her and I really feel like we missed out, not seeing Ms. Spanger. She’s ever so lovely yet trashy. The girl we saw was waaaay too innocent, naive, and wasn’t funny. Amy is funny. It was sad.

Also awesome is the character of Regina, a lesbian activist type who at first works for “the man” but then turns and tries to help them all save their nightclub. I recognized her voice (Lauren Molina) and realized she had played Johanna in Sweeney Todd. Quite a different role here - she dresses up in next to nothing and plays a stripper / dancer in some of the group numbers. Quite the versatile performer; playing a soprano ingenue in Sweeney and here belting, dancing, and doing comedy. Also supremely awesome is the German developer’s son. The super gay super hilarious character of Franz played by Wesley Taylor. Some of the best comic timing I’ve ever seen, in that kid. Looking forward to seeing him in The Addams Family musical.

The costumes are crazy, over the top, LA rock sceney. The set is pretty basic - looks like a rock club. The band is live and onstage for the whole show. And they shred. It’s hot.

The whole experience is super hot. I was in a really bad mood beforehand and afterwards… was still in a bad mood but for the 2 hours the show was happening I was having the time of my life. It’s more like going to a rock show, or even more like a stand up show, then a Broadway musical. I’m actually really surprised that this show managed to make the jump from off-Broadway to Broadway - it’s not the kind of thing I would expect to draw massive crowds, but apparently it does. I really wish I had seen it in a smaller theatre when it was louder, closer, and cheaper. Still totally a shocker that this little show made it all the way to Bway. Must be a lot of people in their 30s and 40s for whom this is total nostalgia-land.

TKTS is not as good as it used to be. I remember back when I first moved to NYC that you could go to the booth a half hour before curtain, pick up some tickets, and if you were lucky, would land 5th row center seats. In fact I believe that happened when I saw Urinetown the first time. And other shows I remember always being able to land good seats. Nowadays, it seems that the TKTS booth only gets the cheap seats - last row of the balcony, basically. It’s a real shame. Although if that means that Broadway ticket sales are up, in general, I guess that’s a good thing. But not for me or anyone that wants a reasonably priced ticket.

So when my mom came into town to see some shows, we asked the booth guy what he had the best seats for (out of a list of 3 options.) Surprisingly, Mary Poppins won, putting us in the 3rd to last row of the orchestra. But they were center, and the design of the New Amsterdam Theatre is such that you don’t feel like you’ve very far back. The audience is raked steeply upward as you reach the back of the house, making those seats feel much closer than in other theatres. Something to remember when booking at Broadway shows - row X is sometimes fine, sometimes miserable.

Anyway I wasn’t too excited to see this again, after seeing it in London (in a massive theatre, in the second balcony, on the side) and feeling like it was really big and impersonal. I felt it lacked the charm of the film. I still feel that the musical does not hold a candle to the movie, but seeing the American production years later, much closer to the stage, I enjoyed it so much more.

I wish they hadn’t Disney-fied it quite so much. I guess they had to. After all it is a “family” show. I.e. you bring your kids. (Or your moms.) But the movie is just so much quirkier. You lose a lot of that with it’s translation to the stage. Not helped is the fact that no matter how good Mary and Bert are, they will never be as good as Julie Andrews or Dick van Dyke. No way, no how. Although this Mary was super awesome (Scarlett Strallen). I wasn’t a fan of the Burt, tho. He wasn’t a great singer, or a great dancer, or a great comedian; really fell short of the original dude’s performance. I actually think he might have been new. And he almost fell off the roof in the first roof scene, it was pretty terrifying actually, because he’s not yet on a safety wire at that point. Yikes. And he missed an entire verse of “Chim Chimmeny.” Definitely nervous.

I also am pretty livid, still, about what they’ve done to the character of Mrs. Banks. Rebecca Luker plays the role well but the sassy, womens-rights suffragette marching lady from the film has been replaced by a bland housewife. Her only character is that of a supportive woman who worries about her husband. That’s it. All the personality stripped away. I guess they felt the suffragette movement was no longer interesting. (not true.) And Mr. Banks, in the film at least was quirky and weird enough to be lovable. Here, he’s just a cold, disinterested finance man who treats his family badly. You wonder why they love him at all.

But, I think I covered all this in my first review of this show (see my archives). There are lots of good things to be said about the production, however. It’s big, bright, colorful, fun, and light. The scenes are a bit boring but as soon as a musical number comes on it’s a pile of toe-tappin’ fun. The new songs are a bit of a snooze but it’s worth it to sit through them for awesome show stopping numbers like Supercalifragi…you know the one….and Step in Time, with all the chimney sweeps tap dancing on the roofs of London town - such a sight. And It’s a Jolly Holiday…the statues in the park come to life and start dancing…and in Just a Spoonful of Sugar, they destroy the kitchen and then put it back together again. So it’s actually quite different from the movie. Oh, also, in this version, Mary is a witch who practices black magic, sends the ‘mean’ nanny to the firey pits of hell, and then resumes being a nanny as if it never happened. They touch on this very briefly, it is very disturbing, and I’m the only person that seems to be bothered by this part of act 2.

Shout out to Marc Price, who plays the houseboy/servant and who’s makeup I did for his headshots. He’s great in it! Kind of gets swallowed a bit by the gigantic-ness of the show, but everyone does a bit. Disney shows are not about great performances from actors. It’s about making big, pretty spectacle. And while I’ve seen bigger and prettier, I can’t deny that I really enjoyed the production.

I know I’m probably not supposed to like any new musical that was based on a film. That’s the only thing lately that producers will seem to want to back; as if popularity of a film will automatically translate into a successful piece of theatre. I don’t get it. But this one totally does and it was a great move on whoever’s idea it was. Prolly a buncha gays.

I remember the film fondly from my childhood. I’m pretty sure I had a copy on VHS and would watch it at my Grandma’s house with my uncle Joe. So, unsurprisingly, I already knew the entire plot and characters and all that. But what they did with the fairly simple plot is really astounding. The musical follows three women in an office in the 1980s. Allison Janney plays the role of Violet, which was Lily Tomlin in the film. Violet is a smart, sassy career girl who’s sleazy, sexist boss keeps her down. Then we have Judy, played by Stephanie J. Block (Jane Fonda in the film), who has just gone thru a messy divorce, has never had to work, and is unskilled and incompetent, and therefore, suffers from lack of confidence. Rounding out the trio is the character of Doralee, made famous by Dolly Parton in the film. Here, Megan Hilty plays the role of…well, Dolly Parton. Blonde, Southern, sassy, and known for her rack. So…Dolly.

The three girls have a rotten lech of a boss, Mr. Franklin Hart, Jr. Played awesomely (and aerodynamically) by Marc Kudisch. Stuff happens, mixups and the like, and comedic chaos mixed with song ensue. It’s so much super fluffy fun I could barely stand it. What was most interesting was how they took a somewhat light plot and filled out the gaps in between plot happenings with songs. A lot of subtext, as in, what is going on in the characters’ brains as told thru song. And also one hell of a dream montage at the end of Act one. Showstopper. Crazy. Costumes and dancing galore.

I also really appreciated how none of the 4 leads were really that similar to the film characters. The essences of the characters remained the same, yet the actors really made the roles their own. Even in the case of Hilty, who is basically forced into doing a Dolly Parton impersonation, didn’t really seem to be doing one.

There’s also a lot of feminism/girl power themes here which might come off a bit trite, but because it was based on a film made at a time when this subject matter was very fresh and real, I think it doesn’t grate because it can be viewed almost as a period piece. Were the show to occur in 2009, it might feel dated. But the show very much exists in the early 80’s. Costumes and dialogue clearly indicate so. So you’ve got kitchy 80s nostalgia going for it as well, and for those of us that remember the 80s it’s a lotta fun. Also fun for young people who weren’t born yet.

Basically just a hell of a lot of fun and an unmissable show for any fan of the musical theatre. Sondheim, it is not. But Dolly Parton, who has never written a musical before, just jumped in and was all like, ok cool I’m writing a musical - and naturally it’s way better than people that have been working in this genre their whole lives. I guess musical legends tend to be versatile.

But anyway yeah, some of the best fun I’ve had at a show in a very long time.