Rock Out

The touring production of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages has rolled into Denver. A friend of mine happens to have worked before with one of the actors in the cast, so she asked me to go along and check out the show.

Here's everything I knew about Rock of Ages before last night: its plot (of which I knew nothing) is built around existing 80s music that was licensed for use in the show; it stars some guy who was on American Idol (that I'd never watched); they are currently making a film version of it to be released some time next year. It turns out there isn't really much more you need to know. The plot is a paper-thin concoction to hold the songs. Those songs skew rather heavily toward "hair metal" (or, if it's not your thing, "butt rock"); whether that's a plus or a minus depends on you.

It was a really odd atmosphere for a show. Rock of Ages was part theater, part concert, and so was the audience seeing it. You could see an old-fogie theater enthusiast couple seated right next to a guy in a Def Leppard t-shirt and his girlfriend dressed like a Valley Girl. People were hooting and hollering most of the time... and yet didn't get on their feet until the final curtain call.

As such, it was quite hard to evaluate just what it was I was seeing. Pretty soon, I stopped actively trying and just sort of let the experience take me. And I'd say for the first act, that more or less worked. The story wasn't really that engaging, nor were most of the characters... but it kind of didn't matter when you only had to wait maybe 90 seconds before getting to some rockin' 80s tune.

But by the second act, the sheen had worn off. The joke writing got lazy, stooping constantly for low-grade "Two and a Half Men" caliber laughs. The forced plot stumbled to a forced conclusion. All the glitz and flash had started to become tiresome. There was no "there" there.

Not helping matters at all was the horrible sound quality of the entire production. The mixing was piss-poor. You could hear the singing well, and the balance of instruments in the band was fine -- but oftentimes the music swallowed up the dialogue almost entirely. Good thing the plot was so simple, because there were times I felt like I was watching a bad childrens' TV program -- lots of noise, motion, and color, with little sense of what's actually going on.

I do have to give praise to a high energy cast. They were a good mix of voices from rock to soul, and really injected power into the performance that made me buy into the "just go with it, it's a concert!" vibe for a lot longer than the show would have sustained on its own.

Also worth a mention is that this show, which first debuted several years ago, totally got there first with the Journey song "Don't Stop Believing." Before Glee, and I think maybe even before The Sopranos, the writers of this show had figured out the song made for both a good chorus number and a good finale. (If only that same cleverness had been applied to more of the script.)

But all told, I'd give Rock of Ages a D+. That forthcoming movie incarnation? I have absolutely no interest in seeing it now.