school of rock review

I saw School of Rock on Saturday, and it was a lot better than I expected. I had originally gone with a negative mindset of, “Oh gosh, I have to take time out of my weekend to go to this dumb play.” Thankfully, I did leave with a much more positive mindset. As I had enjoyed the play, it was definitely not time wasted.

Having not seen the movie in over 10 years, I’m afraid I can’t really compare it to the movie, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the production.

Pros:

The actors seemed to all really enjoy playing their parts, and I didn’t notice any flubs. The songs were catchy and flowed pretty well, there wasn’t a jarring transition from speaking to singing. The plot progressed well and made some sense, save for the odd hiccup of Dewie and Ms. Mollins going to the bar (coffee shop?) together and listening to rock music. The choreography for the songs matched up with what was being sung.

Cons:

The lights fading to black, then rising to blue during transitions was a little frustrating at first, but made sense as there were no curtains. It just felt jarring to sit in total darkness and have it fade to a dim midnight before fading back to black and rising up fully. A large frustration of mine was a lot of the political or modern humor, especially jokes regarding Trump. While I understand they are relevant modern topics, they mostly felt out of place and forced to elicit some laughs from the audience. Another moment of awkwardness was around Dewie and Ms. Mollins’ relationship. While I know the original movie involves a kiss between the two, and I completely understand if both were too uncomfortable with kissing, simply substituting the kiss with a hug instead felt incomplete. The disjoint between the implicit romantic dialogue and the stiff and forced way both actors ended up hugging each other was jarring and a disconcerting to watch, as up to this point the actors had all moved naturally. A minor nitpick was that the actors did not have stellar synchronization while doing the choreography for some of the songs, and it seemed to me that some actors weren’t entirely sure on WHAT the choreography was, especially near the end.