School of Rock is charming and engaging and the kind of big, shiny Broadway musical you could totally bring your kids or your friends from out of town to. It's basically a stage rendition of the movie, with a few catchy (if too frequently reprised and thus eventually a little tiresome) songs by Andrew Lloyd-Webber tossed in for good measure. (I say this, by the way, as someone who has absolutely no problem with Lloyd-Webber or his compositional style; in fact, I found some of his signature modal flourishes weirdly comforting, here.) Alex Brightman, as Dewey, is as committed, adorable and talented as everyone says he is. The kids are, too--even those who don't totally fucking wail on the guitar, bass, keyboards or drums. The whole cast, really, is energetic and hard-working. They all did their damnedest to win me over. They came pretty close.
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| Matthew Murphy |
Full disclosure: I am a cynical theatergoer and I'm especially critical of staged rock musicals, which I've noted in previous posts is a very rare occupational hazard but one I can claim nonetheless. Also, this election has totally fucked with my head and put me in an even darker place than I typically am. So take this review with a grain of salt. I realize that for many people, a light, funny evening at the theater with winning characters, reasonably catchy songs and some jokes that even I laughed out loud at would be plenty. But here's the thing that bugged me:
School of Rock plays on a bunch of racial and cultural stereotypes that I'm really, really tired of seeing on Broadway all the damn time.
A couple of years ago, I dug into some of the ones that bug me most
in my review of Rock of Ages, which
School of Rock reminded me of in a number of ways. Both are breezy, funny, high-energy rock musicals that don't take themselves too seriously, and that poke fun at while simultaneously reinforcing rock's cultural conventions. Rock culture is certainly worth taking potshots at, lordy knows. It's the reinforcement of some of its more stubborn assumptions that wear me down.
