School of Rock - The Musical

What better way to spend a Saturday evening on a cold March night than seeing a huge heartwarming group of youngsters being allowed to sing, dance, act and play instruments and basically have the time of their lives. Throw in a spattering of adults basically doing the same thing and let’s face it your onto a winner! Thank you to Meg for the lovely warm welcome and invitation to drinks when we arrived at The McMillan Theatre. I felt right back at home having performed there myself not so long ago, great this time to relax and enjoy School of Rock. How wonderful to see a full audience once again and boy were they buzzing. You just couldn’t help but get carried away with the electric atmosphere.

SET/LIGHTING You decided on having sliding screens to divide the stage basically giving you two playing areas, front and back. I kind of felt this hindered you’re production a bit. The space in front was quite tight to incorporate the amount of teachers you decided to use plus quite a lot of scenery. Sadly this did slow down the pace with the changes even more so by using stage hands rather than cast. I know only too well the difficulties side of stage at this theatre so housing all that scenery and nearly 40 children must have been a technical nightmare for you. Having seen quite a few productions lately in similar settings most have gone with just one decent open set and maybe creating different levels in which smaller scenes can be done to show different locations and the use of minimal scenery and let the acting take the focus. As long as scene changes are choreographed as part of the action and executed well, the audience gets to enjoy this almost as much as the scenes themselves. Lighting was generally very good and mostly on cue always creating moods and atmosphere.

SOUND Cueing was mostly good and I know it’s impossible with such a huge cast to mic everyone but the balance does goes awry when the odd line just can’t be heard. I didn’t feel the sound was quite balanced between the band and singers. I know what quality musicians you had but they sounded very quiet and muffled through the first half and at times the vocals quite shrill above this. It is a “Rock” musical so I think we were expecting to be hit between the eyes but sadly this lacked in quality. On the other hand the solos hit just right especially “Where Did The Rock Go” and Summers vocal in “Time To Play”. Act 2 did achieve a better balance and warmth within the sound.

COSTUMES I would imagine these were mostly easy to source. We all have something at the back of the wardrobe. The uniforms looked excellent but still allowed each character to shine through. Hair styling also helped this, so good job.

ORCHESTRA As I said earlier, excellent quality musicians under the strict baton of Richard Lennox. Slightly quiet and muffled in the first half but when allowed to let rip good quality musicianship shined through.

CHOREOGRAPHY/CHORUS Wow! Where do you begin to drill such a large cast? Can’t have been easy but you managed it. Good shaping and nice pictures always created. I liked how everyone could manage you’re steps even all the punches seemed right on cue. Good job. Well done. I loved how the company of students seemed engaged with the action and always reacted in the correct way to the situation. I do include the adults in this but you know what it’s like when acting with children I’m afraid they take the focus! Nice to see these youngsters climbing up the ranks. Good work.

ACTING This was generally of a good standard all round.

DUEY: what a part. I was amazed you never seemed to leave the stage and yet I wasn’t aware of you breaking into a sweat! You certainly bought the energy to Duey and of course this was needed. I felt you could have gone even further with him and really let yourself go but you naturally had us warming to you as the show progressed. “You’re In The Band” was a triumph. I loved the interaction with the pupils. I bet the kids loved you, we certainly saw your inner kid and yet showed such wisdom. Great vocal range and what a beast those songs were. Well done on getting to Saturday night with voice intact. I’d of maybe liked a change of tank top somewhere when you had chance but congratulations on what I’m sure was a wonderful week for you.

NED: I understand you came in at the 11th hour to take over. If so well done on what I thought was a nice thought through cameo performance. What a change of character at the end, I had to look twice. Very enjoyable. Well done.

PATTY: A good actress really showing us your frustration with both Duey and Ned. Maybe just a little pause would have been nice when Ned stood up to you at the end, even a little wink to the audience almost to tell us he may have got his own way but actually I like it! Well done.

MISS MULLINS: I felt very safe with you. Always in control and gave us a very good thought through performance. You looked exactly right and sang up a storm. I enjoyed your operatic side as well as the great belty vocals you produced. “Where Did The Rock Go” was a personal high light for me, I felt every bit of your emotion. Congratulations.

THE BAND: How talented were you all. You all had us in the palms of your hands. You all created your own individual characters and were just so believable. I loved your interaction with your fellow pupils, with Mr. Sneebly and Miss Mullins and with your own parents at the end. Great reactions all round. Zack you were insane on that guitar and what lovely rich tones are developing in your voice. Katie and Lawrence both excelled on your instruments and Lawrence showing great comic timing and sincerity. Tomika how well you hid your talent, when you burst into Amazing Grace my jaw dropped and prayed that you sang again later. I was not disappointed. Freddie on drums, you were incredible keeping everyone on beat, very impressive. Billy is going to be a great actor, I enjoyed your scene with your father very much and wanting to show off your flamboyant side by introducing the glittery costumes. Good work. What can I say about Summer? I’d written down cute, adorable and what a scene stealer! You took the focus in all your scenes. Lovely actress and nice vocal variety. “Time To Play” was played and sung to perfection, what an amazing start to act 2. Well done. Leading lady of the future I’m sure. The backing singers excelled. Singing in great harmony whilst also producing the moves. You worked wonderfully as a team and added delicious tones in all your songs. Well done.

DIRECTION: You don’t need me to tell you this is a beast of a show. I was very lucky to catch it in New York a few years back and had a very enjoyable night. There are lots of obstacles to overcome, especially using nearly 40 children in your production and a huge amount of scenery. Swift scene changes are needed. This show needs to maintain a very high level of energy, and as soon as scene changes interrupt the pace, they take their toll and audiences tend to drop their attention span. The scenes, to be honest were fine and I could see that you’d worked well with the characters to achieve this. Really nice shaping of the scenes. Good pictures came across well. Some were over crowded, but I loved you bringing the parents out into the audience at the end. Reminded me of the ladies in Full Monty. We all felt even more a part of the action. So overall a good pace was achieved. Sadly not so much in the scene changes. I remember working with a director once on Singing In The Rain (a very technical show). I’d not worked with him before and we didn’t get chance to chat properly until the after show party, when I asked why he’d chosen such a technical piece of theatre he told me that he would only choose a show if the scene changes read well in the script! Took me years to actually realise what he’d meant and now I get it. Now scenes need to roll from one to another seamlessly and when choosing your show and theatre you then need to marry them up. Basically before scene 5 is finished, we as directors need to be working on setting scene 6 almost before 5 has finished. It does seem so old fashioned now to have any blank areas. I think I stated earlier as long as these scene changes are choreographed the audience enjoy them too. I know I do. Of course extra rehearsal nights are needed just for the scene changes as they are equally as important to any production. Using cast to move scenery rather than stage hands is usually far more swift. I do remember a sofa coming on in act 2 pushed by back stage crew ( dressed in black) he places it ,walks off and I believe it was Duey who then walked in and sat on it. Duey could have done this himself and taken seconds. This could have applied to lots of other scenery you had. Did you need a double bed? It took up so much room in the opening number. A Crumpled up Duvet and pillow on the floor with Duey in it would have been much simpler to remove. Instead it was a difficult and a cumbersome piece of scenery for stage hands to remove. Also we could have maybe got some movement from “No Vacancy” as this felt very static for an opening number but I could see they didn’t really have anywhere to go, a nicer picture would have been to have had two each side and then to be able to come in front of the bed as a group. Just something simple was needed. In my opinion one open set with levels would have served you well in this type of show. The children bringing on their desks could have been brilliantly choreographed too. What I did like about your directing was keeping the focus on the character who’s scene it was. Keeping Duey back and central or front and central when acting or singing. You did this with most characters and I like that. Everyone has their moment. The only time this lacked was with Duey and Summer in their school scene I think she could have left her desk and confronted him more centrally. I mainly thought this as most of my side of the theatre actually couldn’t see her which was a shame. I will never understand how they came up with the seating configuration at The McMillan. I thought it would have been nice to have frozen the characters behind Mrs Mullins when she came forward during “Where Did The Rock Go” (which I loved) brought the light down more defined on her just to create a different mood that this was her thoughts and she’d drifted into them. Using the sliding doors sadly did make it feel Clunky. They were always seen at stage right as they couldn’t fit off stage and a couple of times I thought they were going to come off their hinges. But in saying that I know as a director myself, once you get a vision in your head and you can see it working, you fight as hard as you can to make it work. But sometimes we have to give in and go to plan B. So to put my waffle in a nutshell, in my opinion, you have the makings of a great director. We never stop learning this craft and seeing lots of professional work helps create ideas. Even if sometimes we learn what not to do!! I so admire how you gave yourself this challenge but maybe just a bit more thought into the technical side in future productions. I do hope I haven’t come across as too negative in my critique. Of course it is only my opinion and did I enjoy the show? YES very much as did the whole audience. I can only imagine you were run ragged during this whole process having your finger on the pulse in every direction. You created such a buzz at The McMillan which I know the audiences will be talking about for a long time to come and the opportunities you’ve created for the youth part of your group is incredible, they were certainly living their best lives up there in the spotlight. Congratulations. I do hope I’m invited again. I look forward to your next production very much. Again thanks for the warm welcome. Kind regards Mike. Yours sincerely Mike Purnell NODA Representative South-West District 9

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