First the announcement: the kids in School of Rock bringing down the house at the Winter Garden Theater are playing their own instruments. As this rousing show hews close to the 2003 Richard Linklater movie on which it is based, everyone knows the terrain. Rock is freedom, man, and the joy of School of Rock comes from some brilliant casting: Alex Brightman's Dewey literally channels Jack Black, and those kids are a force unto themselves. A concert musical in the end, it breaks the Broadway form in introducing the band by actor name. By that time you are out of your seat thumping the beat.
By contrast, there's the school where Dewey does his up-yours substitute teaching: the Horace Green school, uptight, and a sure ticket to the Ivy League, any affluent parent's dream. The kids are way cooler than their parents and kowtow in a kind of lockstep misery, until they are liberated by rock n' roll. Bobbi Mackenzie as Tomika singing "Amazing Grace," Evie Dolan as Katie on a mean guitar, and Isabella Russo as the bossy administrative Summer are memorable Horace Green girls. At the Hard Rock Café after-party, when asked whether or not he had a certain Riverdale prep school its name evokes in mind, Julian Fellowes who adapted the book, claimed he never heard of it and will have to look it up.
But then the music! "School of Rock" and "Stick it to the Man" are wonderful production numbers. Yes this is Andrew Lloyd Weber, but even the rockers in the opening night audience from Sting to Stevie Nicks to Peter Asher were having a damned good time.
A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.