The Disney movie for TV broke attendance records in 2006. That same year, summer stock picked it up for stage. The movie version has since gone through two sequels, a third is due for release this year, and the stage version continues gathering momentum across the country.
Author Peter Barosocchini describes it as modern-day “Romeo and Juliet.” Village director and choreographer Jessica Low calls this production of it “a modern-day ‘Romeo and Juliet’ meets ‘Grease.’”
Want to tune into the teen scene?
Everett Performing Arts Center this upcoming weekend’s the place to be, as Village’s Kidstage winds up their two-week run of “High School Musical.”
It’s not the neatest, most polished, linear rock musical you’ll ever see. Emotions erupt at the drop of a hat. Everything is either a tragedy or a miracle, with no in-betweens. Line deliveries sometimes sound like text messages at supersonic speed. Half the time, it’s tough to keep up.
However, this production’s got what the hullabaloo is all about: exuberance fueled by inexhaustible energy.
Long story, short: Basketball-star Troy (Coleman Cummings) and math-whiz Gabriella (DeeAna Michelle) have got a thing for each other. Troy’s a jock. Gabriella’s a brainiac. Like the “Romeo and Juliet’s” Capulets and Montagues, like “Grease’s” gangbangers and cheerleaders, jocks and brainiacs forbid matches to mix. Peer pressures, don’t you know?
Development: Peer-group thespians are putting on a high-school musical, and Troy and Gabriella are forever singing their hearts out to one another. Complication: Circumstances get Troy and Gabriella to try out for the musical; and diva thespian Sharpay (Meagan Moffet) sabotages the jock and the brainiac’s every attempt to audition for the musical.
Is there no end to the peer pressures that would uncross the star-crossed lovers?
Add in a basketball game, cheerleaders, skateboarders, an audience-included school assembly, faculty jealousies, adolescent posturing and temperamental outbursts out of nowhere.
And put it all into keyboards, guitars, an electric bass and drums that swoon, whine, thunder, pout, pound, rage and celebrate.
If all of that sounds like high school, it’s because it is — 2006 and continuing.
And you know what?
Chaotic and whimsical and right-brained as it is, it is also hopeful, resilient and fun. I had a good time.
Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at entopinion@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.
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