Liveliness and a cast bent on having and providing a good time save “Rock of Ages” at New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse from a multitude of theatrical sins.
Goodwill, a marvelous set, occasional delights and a few individual performances, Drew Starlin’s chief among them, make up for wasting the majority of a score composed of ’80s hits from the likes of Foreigner, Pat Benatar, REO Speedwagon and Twisted Sister, among others.
Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” informs this jukebox musical the most. Book writer Chris D’Arienzo builds his plot around it, and Shea Sullivan’s production at BCP ends with a rousing rendition of it.
Sullivan is also the choreographer, and her muscular, constantly developing dances buoy this production and give it the bulk of its zest.
You’d think it would be the parade of hits some in the New Hope audience can’t help but sing along with.
If it wasn’t for their familiarity, the famous songs would be the production’s downfall.
It isn’t that they’re miserably performed. It’s that they’re not performed at all. It takes until the second act, when the main love interests in D’Arienzo’s plot, Sherrie, the small-town girl (Maggie Gidden), and Drew, the striving rocker from South Detroit (Noah Mutterperl), combine in a heartfelt duet of the group Damn Yankees’ “High Enough,” that any song is done with intense focus.
Until then, the cavalcade of all the hits all the time provides a background for fast-paced dancing and unbridled energy that lift the mood of the room but do little to tell the smallest bit of a story, let alone make you care about anything happening on stage beyond the curated excitement.
Curated excitement is a lot. The problem is what it gains in exuberance and cheer, it sacrifices in clarity, texture and any but the most superficial interest in what is going on.
The plot and dialogue are just a background to the next outburst of, yes, spirited showbiz. Neither they nor the songs arranged by Ethan Popp have a chance to register with impact.
Anyone who didn’t know the songs before coming to BCP’s “Rock of Ages” would never know what they were about or why they were used in a particular sequence of “Rock of Ages.”
Speed and vigor are all that count with Sullivan as a director. She doesn’t give most of the songs the chance to be heard or create anything beyond a driving rhythm.
Again, this keeps “Rock of Ages” lively. It also renders it devoid of any meaning, any feeling or any reason to care about anything on stage beyond the wonders of Bryce Cutler’s brilliant set and the verve of Sullivan’s choreography and dance ensemble.
Few performers take the time to bring the songs to the audience. The hits become background to provide a beat.
There are exceptions. Noah Mutterperl, for instance, emerges as a real leading man. He gives glimmers of his yen to be a rock star and reacts to the stumbles and compromises we see him make along the way.
The colleague Sullivan’s young and animated cast should watch and learn from is Drew Starlin, who plays the owner of a Sunset Strip bar and nightclub dedicated to bringing genuine rock talent to the fore.
Starlin’s Dennis is a man without compromises or much reverence for anything but what he considers good music and worthy presentation of it. (Some of his penchant should rub off on Sullivan as director.)
Using a Wolfman Jack voice that might be his or might be part of how he sees Dennis (he drops the rasp to do some well-spoken poetry within “Rock of Ages”), Starlin never rushes or mumbles a line like just about everyone around him does. He paces himself. He makes Dennis’ attitudes and stances known. He stands for something. He makes his character and all he does and says authentic. While others are content to be cardboard cutouts, stereotypes or cartoonish,
Starlin is genuine. He brings you into Dennis. He makes you think something of consequence might be happening within “Rock of Ages,” that there might be a play there, something an audience can get involved in. Something beyond tinsel.
I must repeat Sullivan’s tinsel is top-notch. She keeps things moving and upbeat.
She doesn’t, however, create anything you can, well, start believing in. Any romance, any political or social situation, anything that might make D’Arienzo’s plot interesting or engaging is absent.
So, you have a show that, frankly, I learned to sit back and enjoy. The dancing is great, the music is there. Groove to it.
That may be all Sullivan wants and asks the audience to do: groove.
I would have liked to have more meat on the bone. I’ve seen “Rock of Ages” be both a great musical experience and a decent enough love story to make me give a hoot about Small Town and South Detroit.
That involvement did not mitigate my good time. It enhanced it.
Did Shea Sullivan provide good entertainment? Yes, she did.
Did she provide the most entertainment “Rock of Ages” can give? Nowhere near its best shot.
But assets are assets. If I wasn’t engrossed, I wasn’t bored. If I thought anything “Rock of Ages” wanted to say about love, ambition, individuality, greed and government corruption was glossed over by a low-comic approach to it, I’d have to admit as well that little of it would have gone too deep in the first place.
Maybe rather than being disappointed that a lively “Rock of Ages” was only a fraction of what the show could be, I should be grateful I wasn’t bombarded with populist political platitudes or too much delving into one important part of the musical’s story: the taking over of the club Dennis owns and the Sunset Strip land adjacent to it by developers who pay off a Los Angeles mayor to get their nefarious project approved.
If I really think about it, how much of that do I want to sit through?
On the other hand, maybe I’d like to hear what makes a hit a hit. Maybe barreling one’s way through a song and giving it no personality or obvious dramatic purpose renders a tune, even an acknowledged favorite, moot, the merest filler.
Lyrics are important. Often they are obliterated by a mindless spate of theater sound designers who make mics too hot for words to be heard, especially when sung by sopranos.
I, for one, would have liked to hear them and was grateful to Noah Mutterperl, as I was to Drew Starlin, for letting me decipher some of them. (By the way, my hearing is excellent.)
The cast of “Rock of Ages” was enthusiastic. I admired their energy and enthusiasm. I don’t think they have to slow down as much as give some thought to what a spoken or sung line means. Again, Starlin can teach them.
Wonu Ogunfowora does fine as a woman who owns a strip club catering to male pleasures. She gives balance to the production.
The background singers for a fictional group called Arsenal did a consistently great job. They are not identified by role in the BCP program. I picked out Brevan Collins as one of them from his picture. I’m not sure who the other is.
Conner John Gillooly has a multitude of duties. He is an emcee and narrator, a warm-up guy who gets the crowd into the show, a commentator often called upon to ad-lib to take advantage of a situation like someone in the audience walking in late, and a general factotum who keeps “Rock of Ages” going.
Some of his material was better than others, but Gillooly was instrumental in keeping the energy Sullivan established going when sets and costumes were being changed or no song was in progress.
He had a hard job, and he did it well.
Bryce Cutler’s set, a bar called the Bourbon Room on L.A.’s Sunset Strip, was perfect in every seedy but representative detail. Looking at it before the show started was enough to put one in the mood for it.
Tiffany Howard’s costumes are about as far from my taste as clothing can get, which makes them perfect for a rock setting.
Jose Santiago’s lighting served the show well, keeping up with its brightness and energy and giving the right ice-cube-and-cigarette feel to the Bourbon Room interior.
Sound designer Kevin Heard did not commit the general sin of oversimplifying I mentioned above. The lyrics in this “Rock of Ages” were muffled by poor diction, speedy execution and little thought to making them count beyond their familiarity.
“Rock of Ages” runs through Sunday, November 1, at the Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., in New Hope, Pa. Performance times vary by date. Tickets range from $44 to $137, depending on performance and seating, and can be obtained by visiting bcptheater.org or calling 215-862-2121.
