Don’t stop believin’ in power of rock musical
The Broadway hit celebrating 1980s hair metal is a silly, fun, nostalgic trip back to L.A.’s Sunset Strip
“You hear the first bar of Don’t Stop Believin’ or Wanted Dead or Alive ... and people get excited.” — Peter Jorgensen
If you can’t help singing along every time Night Ranger’s Sister Christian comes on the radio — heck, if you still listen to the radio — the Arts Club has a musical for you.
Rock of Ages is a Big Shiny Tunes tribute to the ’80s, complete with big hair, glam-metal outfits and histrionic power ballads.
The original debuted in 2005 in Los Angeles before going on to Broadway and racking up more than 2,000 performances (it closed in 2015). Some may know the source material from a 2012 movie incarnation, which featured Tom Cruise as the rock star Stacee Jaxx (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin and Bryan Cranston also had roles).
That’s a lot of nostalgia for ’80s hair metal, as maligned a musical genre as there ever has been. But nostalgia is a great leveller.
“I think there are songs in the show that fit into a few categories,” show director and choreographer Peter Jorgensen said.
“There are definitely songs in the show that people have rolled their eyes at a bit, and there are songs that people still roll their eyes at a bit. There are other songs that are awesome whenever you listen to them. You hear the first bar of Don’t Stop Believin’ or Wanted Dead or Alive, the Bon Jovi song, and people get excited. Then there’s the stuff like Twisted and Poison. The more outrageous glam-metal songs probably went out of fashion with the general public. But they’re fun to revisit in the show.”
In the story, set in Los Angeles in 1987, Drew Boley (Kale Penny) is an aspiring rocker who falls in love with Sherrie (Marlie Collins), an aspiring actress and recently relocated Midwesterner. Their trials and tribulations on the Sunset Strip milieu fuel a story that also touches on gentrification and city politics.
Some of the actors in the production, including John Bews, Nick Fontaine, Hugh Macdonald and Mark Richardson, are also musicians and do double duty playing in a live band onstage.
Other actors include Lauren Bowler, Aadin Church, Graham Coffeng, Paige Fraser and, in the Stacee Jaxx role, Robbie Towns. Sean Bayntun is the keyboardist and musical director.
But the real stars of the show are Pat Benatar, Journey, Europe and other artifacts of the first MTV generation.
Almost 40, Jorgensen is old enough to remember the ’80s. Female lead Marlee Collins is not, born two years after the events of Rock of Ages take place.
The singer/actor does, however, know the material covered in Rock of Ages.
“I’ve been singing ’80s rock for the past four years,” she said. “As far as listening to ’80s music, it was more Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson.”
She first came across the musical in its movie version, noting the two are much different. In the musical, for instance, there is no monkey.
In the movie version, Tom Cruise is upstaged by his character’s pet monkey, Hey Man. Hey Man is gone from the theatrical version, of course.
“The only monkey business would be the times we hang from poles,” Collins said.
Despite this, Jorgensen says the stage show is “sillier, goofier” than the movie.
“I feel like they (original book writer Chris D’Arienzo and arranger Ethan Popp) have done a great job of creating a tribute to that time and place, the late ’80s and the Sunset Strip and this ridiculous rock culture that was going on at the time.
“And the script doesn’t take itself seriously. As they sing in the opening refrain, ‘We ain’t looking for nothing but a good time.’ And that’s what the show is.”