Rock of Ages ends the year on a sour note

Karolina Wisniewski
Staff Writer
As I sat through 140 minutes of mind-numbing plot sloppily pasted together with paper-thin characters and shoddy acting, I looked around at the audience.
They were all wearing expressions of enjoyment.

I wondered if I’d fallen through a wormhole into an alternate reality where I was watching a different performance, and not Mirvish’s Rock of Ages.
To give credit where credit is due, Rock did make some shallow attempts to elicit audience engagement, most often via the guise of its narrator, Lonny, who capitalized on “tits and ass” comedy by periodically unleashing sexual innuendos upon whomever was unfortunate enough to be sitting in the front row.
I wasn’t aware I had lined up for amateur night at Yuk Yuk’s.
In one of his many thought-provoking soliloquies, Lonny reminisced that he once aspired to be an actor of depth, only to find that reality had landed him this pitiful gig as a narrator who gets to make “poop jokes.” Ah, culture.
My mystification blew up when I found out the general public – and even some notable critics – were actually lauding Rock’s acting. Of course, Elicia Mackenzie’s voice is a force to be reckoned with, but it felt as if the producer had airlifted her from the stage of The Sound of Music (her previous theatre credit) and stuck poor Maria in a leather corset and thigh high boots.
Her performance was impossibly out of touch with the rest of the casts’, even when you figure her character, Sherrie, is a fresh-faced and wide-eyed farm girl with dreams of making it big in the city of angels.
Yvan Pedneault took on the role of Sherrie’s love interest, Drew. Although he seems to have received generally favourable reviews, I couldn’t help but get the impression he spent the bulk of the musical yelling, and not singing. His performance was about as strong as a Canadian Idol reject’s in a dingy and decrepit karaoke bar during happy hour.
To be fair, musicals are known for stock storylines, fill-in-the-blank dialogue and inordinate amounts of camp. Though the artistic form of the musical doesn’t often compare itself to a Verdi opera, it does have to meet some standards.
No one was expecting Rock of Ages to re-invent the wheel, but the tried-and-true boy-meets-girl plot need not preclude good direction and excellent execution on the part of the actors. Without charm or charisma to help them out, the cast half-heartedly made its way through an unimaginative storyline with directorial cues that did them no favours.
Some have pointed out Rock is well aware of its own ridiculousness, and actually takes delight in it. This self-reflexivity may have been successful if it’d been given enough commitment, but the sub-plot (where a real-estate heavyweight attempts to buy out a portion of the city strip, thereby endangering the very future of rock’n’roll) centered on cartoon-like renderings of social protest and fit poorly with the self-mocking quality reviewers have ascribed to the show.
Due diligence ought to be paid to the strengths of Rock of Ages. As previously mentioned, Mackenzie did a wonderful job in her vocals, and a bulk of the cast, while not providing breathtaking performances, delivered satisfactory renditions of some ’80s classics. David Keeley, who played the hippie, Dennis, was a refreshingly non-irritating stage presence, and Cody Lancaster as Franz provided one of the only examples of true comedic finesse and timing. Certainly not least of all, the live band executed cascading guitar solos and powerful ballads with all the genuine energy of the originals.
In the end, even after allowances for the obligatory fart jokes and transparent plot twists, Rock of Ages fell hopelessly short of even the most modest expectations. In retrospect, the entire experience was more
akin to a monster truck rally than anything even peripherally related to the arts.
In the same way that Toronto theatre is internationally derided as hopelessly average, there’s only so much that can be done with a script that carries all the sophistication and subtlety of a Curious George book.
I suspect that not even the wealth of talent found on Broadway could manage to distil a worthwhile final product from Rock of Ages.
Musicals 2010 –2011
Unfortunately, Rock of Ages is the final note on an otherwise interesting year for musical theatre in Toronto. 2010 saw the concluding chapters of the acclaimed runs of shows like Mamma Mia! and The Sound of Music. Meanwhile, it also saw a wealth of hits and misses from other performances like the surprisingly enjoyable Jersey Boys, a lackluster revival of Grease and, of course, the painful Legally Blonde: The Musical. And after all that, 2011 packs a promising schedule:
Billy Elliot
Canon Theatre February 1
The Secret Garden
Royal Alexandra Theatre February 8
The Lion King
Princess of Wales Theatre April 19