#SHOWBIZ: Fun time with kids rocking out

New Straits Times

a day ago

IN 2003, Hollywood actor Jack Black made a splash with his comedy 'School of Rock'.
Written by Mike White and directed by Richard Linklater, it followed an out-of-work rocker who becomes a substitute teacher in an uptight private elementary school, where he tries to turn his class into a rock band.
The hit movie eventually spawned a musical in 2015, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Glenn Slater, and a book by Julian Fellowes, that has enjoyed successful runs on Broadway and the West End.
The Cempaka Performing Arts Company recently staged its rendition of 'School of Rock The Musical' in KL.
An iconic rock musical performed in a school production needed a serious look-in to see if our kids were all right.
So theatre reviewers from two different generations were game to rate the results of the production by the Cempaka students.
The Gen X'er, Elaine Tan, old enough to be a grand-aunt to the younger performers, said she never liked Jack Black.
"All his characters are on hyperdrive. Which means he was perfectly cast as Dewey Finn in the 2003 movie 'School of Rock'.
"Which means the lead actress in the Cempaka rendition of the musical did a great job, because I was almost rooting for her to skip the maths lesson and sneak her students out for Battle of The Bands despite the character's glaring lack of any responsible virtues."
Tan added: "My co-guests, aged 10 and 16, when asked who they liked most, had no such compunction, with the little girl enthusiastically and approvingly declaring 'She's so loud and craaazy!'. My vote went to Miss Mullens for Best Voice."
Tan mused that for grown-ups with all their adult problems, this was a time to sit back and watch the kids performing their hearts out, adding, "to chat with our young friends in the audience and hear their opinions; to note how well put together the event was, complete with a snack stand.
"It is always a kind of pleasure experiencing kids doing things — even the prefect usher who asked to see my ticket when I stepped outside the hall to check my phone."
Tan summed up the show by the Cempaka Performing Arts Company, known for winning Boh Cameronian Awards, as "a lovely family and friends evening with the young ones".
Meanwhile, the Gen Z'er, Darren Tio, who was its target demographic when the movie that inspired it first came out, said: "I love Jack Black, his mannerisms, his energy, and I thought Illena Matin did an excellent job capturing his manic yet affable essence."
"The original School of Rock was a staple school movie growing up, shown whenever English teachers felt like too lazy for lessons, and it isn't hard to see why.
"It featured an actual likeable cast of child actors led by the fun, non-conforming rebel in Black to perform original and catchy mid-2000s pop-rock, all in a fun and cheery beat."
Tio said his expectation for the musical was tainted by nostalgia, but also tempered by knowing it was a student production.
"I wanted it to be good, but I wasn't sure if it was fair of me to have high expectations. In the end, I felt wowed by almost everything in this production.
'From the performances, some of whom were clear stand-outs, to the production quality to the music (especially Puteri Azahara's rendition of 'Where Did The Rock Go?')."
He added that what impressed him most was the scale of the whole thing.
'In the end, when every performer, dancer, and actor comes on stage for their curtain call, you become aware of just how big the production was, and how excited each of them was to be there.
"This was a show that brimmed with excitement and fun from every cast and crew member, imbuing it onto the audience easily so that even we were cheering at the closing number.
Elaine Tan was a theatre and food critic while in communication, project management, and strategic planning.
Darren Tio is a KL-based writer who grew up in Pontianak, Indonesia, and has a degree in creative writing.