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Brash, loud and rocking good fun
Rock of Ages
New Alexandra Theatre
**** ITS brash, loud, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’
roll and that is pretty much all you need to know – and did I mention it
is great fun? This is a show that manages to send its audience home filled by a feel good factor . . . and temporary deafness, that slightly ringing in the ears muffled deafness you get as you walk out of stadium shows driven by zillion watt speakers. It is a show that takes you back to your youth,
mine being even further back than the show’s 1987 setting, having seen
The Who with mad as a hatter Keith Moon on drums, and the Rolling Stones
when they didn’t have bus passes as well as booking both the Crazy World
of Arthur Brown and Brian Auger and the Trinity with Julie Driscoll in
my student ents days. Rock of Ages stripped of its mix of glam rock and
heavy metal is a jukebox musical, although in this case the jukebox is
probably in a bar frequented by bikers. It has a boy meets girl storyline which could be
written on the back of a fag packet, lots of suggestive moves and
comments, and even more rock tracks from the 70s and 80s, including
Cum on Feel The Noize by the West Midland’s own Slade. Hear’Say’s Noel Sullivan is Drew, wannabe rock
star working in The Bourbon Bar of Denis Dupree, played by the excellent
Daniel Fletcher, who played the role in the West End Sullivan, whose impressive stage CV makes him
much more than merely a member of a manufactured pop group, shines with
a good rock voice and some huge lung power as he wins, loses, wins,
loses (and on for the next two hours) the heart of wannabe actress
Sherrie, played by Cordelia Farnworth who won an understudy of the year
award for covering the role in the West End production. It is easy to
see why.
As with all jukebox musicals the urge to cram in
as many numbers as possible – there are 30 music credits in the
programme – means you rarely if ever get a full song, which is a pity as
both Sullivan and Farnworth have good voices which was shown by
Farnworth’s singing of Extreme’s lovely acoustic love song More Than
Words mixed with Warrant’s Heaven sung by Sullivan and
their duet on Foreigner’s Waiting for Girl Like You. Their voices
blended well which is not always the case in duets. Into the mix we have the arrogant rock god Stacee
Jaxx, front man for fictional supergroup Arsenal, played by West End
regular Ben Richards. Richards , who was also Bruno in Footballer’s’
Wives, is another with a good voice for rock and gives us an over the
top performance as the god’s gift to women rock star adored by girls,
despised by blokes and positively hated by his band particularly when he
dumped them to strike out, unsuccessfully, on a solo career.
The soundman for the club, and the narrator, as
he has to remind Drew, is Lonny, played by Stephen Rahman-Hughes, who
has a musical theatre background but can turn his hand to rock and
comedy without blinking an eyelid. One of the beauties of the show is that it does
not take itself too seriously and Lonny is happy to talk to the audience
and we even have a scene when to cheer up a despondent Drew who fears he
has lost Sherrie (again) by telling him it is just a script and he has
no need to follow it, so go and get her. We know it is all in the script, but this is a
rock show, so we like a bit of rebellion, even rehearsed rebellion. The backstory sees German developer Hertz
Klinemann and his son Franz, played by Jack Lord and Cameron Sharp,
showing a nice sense of fun, as they try to rip down Sunset Strip
including the Bourbon after paying off the mayor, Rakesh Boury, until
they are challenged by Los Angeles city planner and career hippy Regina,
played by Jessie May. And Jessie helps dreams come true with Hertz and
Franz seeing the light and following theirs as we rock into a happy
ending. There is plenty of satire and send up of the
affectations of rock and pop, and good support from a hard working
ensemble who danced and sang their way through the show. But none of it would have happened without a
wonderful band under musical director Pierce Tee on keyboards. Ashley
Williams is a mean lead guitarist while Andy Gammon give us a solid
rhythm, more important than many people think, and some sensitive
acoustic work with Bary Liedeman and Alex Marchinson providing pulsating
bass and drums respectively. Sound was a bit woolly at the start, not uncommon
in a new theatre where initial sound check settings can be way out on
opening night with a full auditorium, but it settled down as the show
went on and despite being rock show loud, the sound was never distorted,
which is a credit to Peter Hylenski’s sound design. Lighting from Jason
Lyons was slick and Beowulf (what a great name) Boritt produced a
brilliant set design from the video screen, shaped a little like a huge
church window, at the rear of the stage to the section of wall that
opened out to give us the club gents, an office for Venus strip club
madame Justice Charlier, whose dream was to be a soul singer, played by
Rachel MacFarlane, the mayor’s office and any other scene needed. Director Kristin Hanggi keeps up a good pace in
what is a fun, tongue-in-cheek show which rocks on to 17-05-14. Roger Clarke
12-05-14
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She
has a lovely voice and is a nice mover as she descends from a waitress
with dreams to stripper and lap dancer and back again.