musings on The jukebox Musical (please pardon all errors, it's late)
These thoughts won't leave my head, so I'm inflicting them on the world. Read if you like, they're hardly revolutionary.
"Rock of Ages" is the latest of several "jukebox musicals" (a musical based off of songs of one particular group or groups) I've seen. It was fun, largely due to going with my Mom and the fact that the songs were performed well, but the reason I say it was good and not great (aside from not being a child/teen/college student of the 80s) is because of plot.
Just in case anyone stumbling across this in a google search is dying to see this show, I won't spoil it. This isn't a review, it's commentary. My problem with "Rock of Ages" is that you had songs which, apart from a few lines, weren't about what the characters were going through in the script. To give a few examples (there are more), a girl gets off the phone with her dad, whose disdainful of her ambition to be an actress, by ending the call with "I just wanted to say I love you" and then sings "I don't want to hear I love you." The song's about heartbreak from a lover, not from disapproving parents. The same with a lyric that says "you called me baby" when in the scene previous to this duet, neither character called the other baby in dialogue. These odd moments would not be hard to incorperate: have the girl try to reconnect with an old flame while on the phone (it would give more significance to a lyric about being hurt by romance that she sings later on), find some comic way to get the word baby into the script (it doesn't fit either character's personality to say it under the circumstances, but the narrator could plausibly interject something).
My point, is that the songs were clearly chosen first, then a fictional plot was created to fit around them (unlike "Jersey Boys" or "The Million Dollar Quartette" which were based around rl events, so the songs were never about character); it's also why a medley of songs became rather common here and there, because the majority of a song didn't fit the context/character, so we'd switch back and forth between tunes/scenes. Comparing this to "We Will Rock You", or "Mama Mia!" where the plot came first and songs were woven in (in the former "Pressure" has the main characters singing about the dictatorship of their country; the latter show's title song has a woman in shock at seeing her ex-lovers and old feelings leaping to the surface), "Rock of Ages" falls flat in the creator creativity area. I can't even explain the meaning behind the title; it's not taken from a song title used in the show unlike the respective Queen and Aba based works above, it's not rock songs throughout the ages, we don't have young characters singing the early 80s songs and older ones the later...it's not a show for all ages. Seriously, it's a cool title, but I'm not seeing the link!
Anyway, to make a point of my babbling: musicals tell stories through song, the songs being an exact, direct gateway into a character's exact thoughts/opinions/emotions. While fun, there were moments when "Rock of Ages" was a mix of hit songs tangled together just to get 'em all in, and we have seen that a jukebox musical can be more than that. If Ages were the first ever attempt, I could forgive such flaws, but it's the latest. Don't let the standards fall now.
Posted via m.livejournal.com.
"Rock of Ages" is the latest of several "jukebox musicals" (a musical based off of songs of one particular group or groups) I've seen. It was fun, largely due to going with my Mom and the fact that the songs were performed well, but the reason I say it was good and not great (aside from not being a child/teen/college student of the 80s) is because of plot.
Just in case anyone stumbling across this in a google search is dying to see this show, I won't spoil it. This isn't a review, it's commentary. My problem with "Rock of Ages" is that you had songs which, apart from a few lines, weren't about what the characters were going through in the script. To give a few examples (there are more), a girl gets off the phone with her dad, whose disdainful of her ambition to be an actress, by ending the call with "I just wanted to say I love you" and then sings "I don't want to hear I love you." The song's about heartbreak from a lover, not from disapproving parents. The same with a lyric that says "you called me baby" when in the scene previous to this duet, neither character called the other baby in dialogue. These odd moments would not be hard to incorperate: have the girl try to reconnect with an old flame while on the phone (it would give more significance to a lyric about being hurt by romance that she sings later on), find some comic way to get the word baby into the script (it doesn't fit either character's personality to say it under the circumstances, but the narrator could plausibly interject something).
My point, is that the songs were clearly chosen first, then a fictional plot was created to fit around them (unlike "Jersey Boys" or "The Million Dollar Quartette" which were based around rl events, so the songs were never about character); it's also why a medley of songs became rather common here and there, because the majority of a song didn't fit the context/character, so we'd switch back and forth between tunes/scenes. Comparing this to "We Will Rock You", or "Mama Mia!" where the plot came first and songs were woven in (in the former "Pressure" has the main characters singing about the dictatorship of their country; the latter show's title song has a woman in shock at seeing her ex-lovers and old feelings leaping to the surface), "Rock of Ages" falls flat in the creator creativity area. I can't even explain the meaning behind the title; it's not taken from a song title used in the show unlike the respective Queen and Aba based works above, it's not rock songs throughout the ages, we don't have young characters singing the early 80s songs and older ones the later...it's not a show for all ages. Seriously, it's a cool title, but I'm not seeing the link!
Anyway, to make a point of my babbling: musicals tell stories through song, the songs being an exact, direct gateway into a character's exact thoughts/opinions/emotions. While fun, there were moments when "Rock of Ages" was a mix of hit songs tangled together just to get 'em all in, and we have seen that a jukebox musical can be more than that. If Ages were the first ever attempt, I could forgive such flaws, but it's the latest. Don't let the standards fall now.
Posted via m.livejournal.com.