ROCK ON, KIDS
Make no mistake. The pint-sized cast members of School of Rock are big on talent,
Before the lights go down in the Ed Mirvish Theatre, before the curtain rises, before the audience hears the faux hair-rock song that begins the musical
School of Rock, the audience hears the voice of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber with a simple message: the child performers in the show do, in fact, play their own instruments.
It may come out of the blue, but it’s a key fact to know up front. Much like the 2003 movie starring Jack Black, School
of Rock the musical features a large cast of kids who dance, act, sing, and play drums, guitar, bass and keyboards themselves — and it instantly raises the emotional stakes in their journey from polite prep school students to rockers who find personal expression through music, with the help of a poseur substitute teacher.
Sure, the kids look cute in their uniforms, but as soon as they let loose in their first instrumental and vocal riffs, the show takes off.
But how hard can it really be, being a pint-sized rock star?
“The movie was actually one of my biggest inspirations to play the guitar. Kids my age playing instruments in a super iconic movie, it’s just so cool,” said 12-year-old Jesse Sparks, who’s making his stage debut in the School of Rock national tour. He started singing at 3, playing piano at 5, guitar at 8 and drums at 10. Now he’s even writing a couple of songs on tour.
His favourite moment so far has been trying out the duckwalk in the show’s climactic musical number as the understudy for Zack, the class’s lead guitarist.
Twelve-year-old Theo Mitchell-Penner has been playing keyboardist Lawrence since the tour began in October 2017. In one performance, he improvised a back bend during a solo that has since become his signature move. “You start to run out of energy, but when the crowd reacts like that you take that energy back and throw it back at them. It’s kind of like a game of tennis,” he said.
This cast of approximately 17 kids are living the rock star life handling nightly performances and travel schedules while keeping up with school in the daytime. And as 11-year-old Leanne Parks — who plays the band’s bassist, Katie — says, they even carve out time to form their own mini-bands within the cast. Her band, Roadhouse, has a goal to learn three songs while in Toronto, all with “Rock” in the title.
“I get to be with people that have the same passions as me,” said Parks, who started playing the piano at 5 and picked up the bass two years ago with the help of her father, who now joins her on tour.
“It’s the glue of the band, because it glues the melody and the beat and the bass line together, and it keeps the band from falling apart,” she said.
Parks is easily spotted onstage, sporting Katie’s rocker facial expression: an intensely furrowed brow and equally ferocious puckered lips. She also plays a mean version of the opening riff of Deep Purple’s 1972 classic “Smoke on the Water.”
When I decided to learn more about what these young performers have up their sleeves, Parks graciously lent me her bass to try myself, under her tutelage. With no musical training outside of my mandatory middle school band practice on the trumpet, I soon became the most novice student of the School of Rock and Parks revealed a trait unseen in her stage performance: immense patience.
There may only be four different chords in the Deep Purple riff, but stumbling through that simple arrangement was, to say the least, humbling; especially in the presence of a musician two decades my junior.
But for Parks, a life in performance seemed predestined after growing up in the ballet classes her mother teaches. At 2 years old, she accidentally crashed a recital.
“I thought, ‘Oh, is this a rehearsal? Then I can go on, too.’ And my dad had to grab me. I don’t remember it, but it was really funny,” she said.
As for my own final recital, Parks gave me an (admittedly undeserved) nine out of10. Not everyone can be top of the class in the School of Rock.
School of Rock is at the Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St., until Jan. 6. See mirvish.com for information. Carly Maga is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @RadioMaga