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Show: School of Rock
Society: CAODS
Venue: Theatre Royal Lincoln
Credits: Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Book by Julian Fellowes. Lyrics by Glenn Slater.
Type: Sardines
Author: Janet Smith
Performance Date: 12/05/2023
School of Rock
Janet Smith | 13 May 2023 17:31pm
It had to happen of course; a stage version of a 2003 film made on a budget of $35 million, going on to gross $131, and becoming the highest grossing music themed comedy. I’m talking of course about the phenomenon, School of Rock.
Thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber purchasing the rights ten years later, I’m here tonight and looking forwards enormously to County Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society’s production!
The stage is set simply for a concert, pride of place a drumkit, with multiple speakers placed around the set. Enter a roadie with mikes, who answers a phone call reminding him to turn off his mobile; cue for audience to rummage in handbags and pockets. And then things start rocking when the band ‘No Vacancy’ deliver a supercharged I’m Too Hot For You. It’s pretty loud. When Dewey Finn, the main protagonist attempts to upstage the lead singer, he’s out on his ear, and our story begins.
If you don’t know the plot, it basically turns on its head the well-trodden stories of teachers, who go into a lion’s den of unruly pupils, and by patient persistence, turn them around. This ain’t like that. It’s rock. For a start, Dewey Finn, admirably and energetically played by Billy Baxer, is a self-centred bum, whose one big dream is to become a famous rock singer in a famous rock band. Singing ‘When I Climb To The Top Of Mount Rock’ from his messy bedroom in his best friend’s house, he sets out his ambition with defiance.
Seizing an opportunity to pay his rent, he impersonates best friend, Ned Schneebly as substitute teacher at the prestigious Horace Green School. On his first day, he is hung-over, demands food from the pupils, and on being offered a granola bar, takes one bite, and spits it back into the pupil’s open desk. Then he asks who has money, and sends another pupil out for a fast-food snack for himself, and gives them all recess (playtime). The pupils, who hunger for gold stars, homework and grades, are disgusted. It’s an inauspicious start; but the unemployed self-centred bum does in the end make an important contribution to their lives: rock, the perfect vehicle for their inner frustrations and anger, and a belief in themselves. In the end of course, he finds the good in himself.
The real Ned Schneebly, a wonderful name, almost an adjective, is played schneebly like, all adenoidal and stooped, by Matt Brian. He takes an excellent part, and the discovery that Dewey has been impersonating him causes a panic attack, which has the audience in stitches as he breathes in and out of a yellow rubber glove, with Dewey bicycling his legs up and down. His domineering girlfriend Patty Di Marco, who loves Ned, and despises Dewey and all he stands for, is played admirably by Emma Wighton.
The Head of Horace Green School, Rosalie Mullins is played excellently by Helen Evans, with a singing voice that can vocally climb Mount Everest. Her song ‘Where Did The Rock Go’, where she grieves for her lost self, is affecting.
There are some thirty-two songs in the show; fourteen new ones by Andrew Lloyd Webber, plus all those in the film version. All are sung extremely well. The musicians, led excellently by Musical Director Kev Richardson and Assistant Musical Director Owen Tyas must be having a ball in the orchestra pit, but the music is rather loud for all of Glenn Slater’s lyrics to be heard, and does drown some of the dialogue. But this is the first night. Hopefully it will be toned down a bit.
Despite it being first night, all the actors are line perfect, and from the actors playing the teachers, to the parents, everyone is going for it.
The choreography by Deanna Love is fun, and obviously hugely enjoyed by the dancers. Emma Wilson and assistant Amy Magnone created the school uniforms and importantly the ‘looks’ which skilfully embodies the many characters. Direction by David Taylor is extremely good. There are many scene changes and all are slick and seamlessly executed. The bare stage is at times transformed from concert hall to bedroom, to school classroom, to staff room with ease. The kids even push their own desks offstage.
I haven’t mentioned the kids who play the pupils yet; two teams, ‘Guns’ and ‘Roses’ on different nights. Tonight, it is ‘Guns’. Andrew Lloyd Webber said that he wrote in more rounded parts for the pupils than in the film version, to show snippets of home lives with their parents, threading better into why the pupils needed rock in their lives.
The pupils and prefects are all fabulous. It would be unjust to name any, as all perform with huge energy and enthusiasm. I particularly like Stick It To The Man – such fun! W.C. Fields said ‘Never work with children or animals’ and whilst everyone on stage filled their parts admirably, he was right – they stole the show!
The show continues every evening until 20 May, with matinees on Saturdays.