School of Rock West End 2017

[sam31]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 8:03am

School of Rock the musical has now been pushed back to Spring 2017. It was meant to be coming to the West End Autumn 2016. No idea why.

[Justin D]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 11:59am

Theatre availability perhaps?

When I saw it I thought they used the Winter Garden's insanely wide proscenium opening well in their design. I guess they could squeeze it into a square stage opening fine. Chances are ALW is just waiting on the Paladium to become available

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 12:15pm

sam31 said: "School of Rock the musical has now been pushed back to Spring 2017. It was meant to be coming to the West End Autumn 2016. No idea why."

 

Thanks for the link!

[devonian.t]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 2:03pm

There have definitely been casting calls for kids already.  Maybe the postponement shows the kind of work they now know needs to be done.

[Princeton Returns]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 2:48pm

This was announced a little while ago, possibly even late last year. Rumour is it may not go to the palladium anymore.  Also the rumour is a panto will be in the palladium this xmas

[dreamer92]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 3:38pm

I believed I read that the UK has strict child entertainments laws, so they will have to have 3 separate child cast (3 guitarist, bassist, drummers, and pianist) plus the non playing instrument kids.  I don't think they will have a problem finding kids who play piano but the rest will be challenging.  I think they should cast kids and basically put them in rock school like they did with Billy Elliot.    

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 4:19pm

Does the US not have strict child laws? We have 4 girls play Matilda and had 3 boys play bully.

[toofunktastic2]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 4:30pm

Call_me_jorge said: "Does the US not have strict child laws? We have 4 girls play Matilda and had 3 boys play bully."

That's by choice rather than by law.  If they wanted they could've easily had one girl play Matilda and they could've technically did that for Billy, but of course that would've likely been a lot for one kid to handle. Compare that to Matilda in the West End which has four Matildas, four Bruces and the rest triple cast. Same with all of the children in Billy despite how small most of the parts are. 

[Justin D]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 6:07pm

I was wondering that same thing, with Lion Kind having multiple young lions too. But the kids in SOR were so talented, particularly the drummer, It would be a shame to have to split them up into 3 different groups.

[itis2l84u]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 7:37pm

dreamer92 said: "I believed I read that the UK has strict child entertainments laws, so they will have to have 3 separate child cast (3 guitarist, bassist, drummers, and pianist) plus the non playing instrument kids.  I don't think they will have a problem finding kids who play piano but the rest will be challenging.  I think they should cast kids and basically put them in rock school like they did with Billy Elliot.    

 

"

You're correct. For any show in the UK every single child role must be shared by three children no matter how small the role is. For example, in Billy Elliot there are three casts of ballet girls, three small boys, and three tall boys. For Matilda every child role is shared by three children except Bruce and Matilda which has four kids sharing each role. I can't imagine finding just one cast of kids to pull of School of Rock could be easy let alone three casts. Plus they have to rehearse not one but three casts of kids. Fall 2016 always seemed like it was pushing it to try and get a production up and running so fast.