Rock Of Ages Wastes No Time Coming To London

'Rock Of Age's' hits London for Spring 2010.

More rubbish to clog up another West End house.
This kind of crap has been touring the provinces for years as one night concerts etc.

http://www.whatsonstage.com/gossip/theatre/london/E8831251981514/Rock+of+Ages+Bang+up+for+2010+London+Opening%3F%3F%3F.html

Updated On: 9/4/09 at 11:22 PM

I LOVE IT!!!!
GREAT NEWSSS!!!!!!!!!!

Im a sucker for this show. LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!

So Rock of Ages is opening immediately but Xanadu, which is actually well written still can't get its act together?

Boo.

I... quite like Rock of Ages. :3 I've identified three different varieties of jukebox musical, and it turns out it's only the "shoddy story woven around a single musical act's best-known songs" ones I don't approve of, whereas the "pick a theme, use as many songs as you can from as many musical acts as you need that fit this theme, and just have fun!" ones are actually quite pleasing to me. (Yeah, I'm coupling Rock of Ages with Priscilla, even though the latter has a good solid story and the former has an innately silly one; the silliness is at least half the fun!)

And you know what the West End is like, they'll lap it up. Theatre-phobic guys have been a little more limited in their musical choices since Spamalot closed, this could be just what they need. :3

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Was that to me? 'Cos I said that - "use as many songs as you can from as many musical acts as you need that fit this theme, and just have fun!".

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I saw this in NY, I went in with discounted tickets expecting to hate the show itself but enjoy the music. I had so much fun, I loved it. Not as a 'good musical' because it isn't, but it was a fantastic night out. Like others have said, its got a strong audience already.

I'll certainly be seeing it when it opens in London.

Sing A Long A Rock Of Ages!
OMG!

I had such a great time at this show! More so than Xanadu I think, which I greatly enjoyed. I'd gladly go back and see it again. Probably the most fun I've ever had watching a Broadway musical.

songanddanceman2 - I might have seen the same DVD (after I saw the show on Broadway) and it was nothing like seeing the show live. Especially since the camera ducks out of sight and you see nothing for half the DVD and you can barely understand what they're saying or see where the attention is focused. It's not funny because 90% of the time, you can't see or hear any of the jokes or sight gags. If that DVD was all I had to go on, I'd find the show insanely boring, too.

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Not a big fan of rock music, but I expect this will find an audience in the West End as it did on Broadway. I still think it's a bit of a stretch claiming to be a musical though.

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It depresses me that this will get a west end house, will most likely get a LONG run and Spring didn't last 6 months. My housemates doing her dissertation on why musical theatre is slowly vanishing and being replaced by 80s films and tribute shows... this is another nail in the coffin of musical theatre that we love

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Not the musical theatre that I love. It's not preventing other types of shows from being written or produced. Musical theatre is not vanishing at all. Adaptations of 80s films are no different than adaptations of recent plays and novels were in the 50s and 60s. Tribute musicals and even jukebox musicals have not overrun Broadway or the West End to become a majority or even threaten the existence of any other shows. To believe musical theatre should not exist outside a rigid set of rules and standards is to deny it is an evolving art form like any other. It's like saying Nixon in China is not an opera because it did not follow the form of Puccini or Verdi. Or that the Impressionist or Cubist styles of painting were not art because they were no longer the realistic representations set forth from the previous periods.

If you believe musical theatre is art, then you need to accept that it will evolve, expand and change. And while there is art to musical theatre, like films and music, it is also popular entertainment, and in the case of Broadway and the West End, it is a commercial business as well. Rock of Ages is no more of a threat to musical theatre than Ain't Misbehavin', Smokey Joe's Cafe or Beatlemania. Especially since (at least on Broadway) 80s film adaptations, jukebox musicals and tribute shows have not proven to be historically all that successful. Oustide Jersey Boys and Mamma Mia, Broadway has yet to produce another hit jukebox/tribute musical, though the West End has been quicker to embrace them as evidenced by Buddy and The Rat Pack. And what other 80s film has reached the success of Hairspray other than possibly Fame, but only in the UK and Europe?

If an 80s film adaptation has a score, then it's still a musical. If a tribute show has songs sung by the characters, then it is still a musical. Non-book revues are still musicals. Even unconventional spectacles like Lord of the Rings or Notre Dame de Paris, good or bad, are still musicals. The only shows in recent years I feel have sort of really blurred the line in musical theatre would be Contact or Movin' Out, which are ballets, though Movin' Out does use live music and singers to tell the story.

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ROA has a plot. Thriller doesn't. Your argument is moot.

My 'argument' is also my opinion - I honestly doubt many people will be going to see ROA for it's plot!

If it's entertaining enough to win over my reservations then so be it - then I'll be happy to wish good luck to all involved (and I don't wish them ill as it is). It's just not my sort of thing.

Therefore at the moment I remain to be convinced. As I said, good casting may change my mind...

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