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| Brent Hill as Dewey Finn with child cast in School of Rock |
Based on the 2003 film starring Jack Black and Joan Cusack, School of Rock the musical follows the
same basic premise – after being kicked out of his current band, Dewey Finn
takes on the name of his teacher friend, Ned Schneebly, and gets a job at a
private school. There, instead of educating the students in English, Math or
History, he forms a band with the children so he can compete in the Battle of
the Bands against his old band mates.
Dewey (Brent Hill) is a bit of a loser, but he’s a free
spirit, who loves rock and roll so much that he wants to teach his students to find
their voices, embrace their talent and as all edgy rock musicians must do in rebellion
– he teaches them to “Stick It to the Man”. The villain of the piece is The Establishment,
the private school they attend – Horace Green Prep. The principal, Rosalie
Mullins (Amy Lehpamer), is a stickler for the rules and is uptight, both of
which Dewey abhors, of course.
It’s a gender reversal on The Sound of Music; instead of a headstrong nun teaching the
children of the uptight Captain Von Trapp to sing, rebel Dewey teaches the
children of Roz’s private school to rock the status quo.
Unfortunately, School
of Rock doesn’t have many memorable songs. “Stick it to the Man” is catchy
enough, working as the Act I finale and reprised at the end. Roz’s solo “Where
Did the Rock Go?” gives Lehpamer a chance to shine, when most of the musical
wastes her in the role of principal. The actual musical highlight comes when a
shy child finds her voice and sings “Amazing Grace” in Act II.
Brent Hill is charismatic and full of life as Dewey, but he’s
channelling Jack Black, as I guess one must in this role. It’s so strange to
see this approximation of a film role that so suited Black, but the creation is
fun enough that I enjoyed Hill’s cover of the original.
Expanding a 100-minute film into a two-and-a-half-hour
musical has led to fleshing out the child characters, in a small way. We get a
sense that all their home lives are tricky; none of them can live up to their
fathers’ expectations. (In a montage of their struggles out of school, we don’t
see any of their mothers. A strange choice and more on that later.) But with so
many child characters, there’s still not enough time to really make them into
interesting people.
That said, the classroom scenes are full of life and fun;
the young performers work well together and there’s nothing too precocious or
saccharine about this lot. In contrast, the adults-only scenes – such as those
in the Teachers’ Lounge – are leaden and dull. All of them are caricatures and
most of the jokes in those scenes land with a thud.
School of Rock is
a slick Broadway musical that is too long and lacks any real dramatic stakes; Dewey’s
duplicity is hardly ever challenged and once the truth is exposed, the show
still barrels toward a happy ending, the problems finally swept away without
consequence.
You could take a kid to the show and they would enjoy
watching kids rebelling in the classroom and forming a band and the ridiculous
antics of Dewey Finn, but I really wish you wouldn’t. For one major reason…
School of Rock treats women very badly.
The two major adult female roles in School of Rock are the
principal and the ex-girlfriend of Dewey’s friend, Ned. While Roz the principal
is concerned about her students for good reason, she is still described as “ice
cold” – a not-terribly-clever disguise for what Dewey is really saying, “frigid”.
And she goes through the predictable story arc of learning to let her hair down
and get her rock on.
Ex-girlfriend Patty is a shrewish nag, who doesn’t want Ned
to be in a band anymore, for no other reason than she thinks it’s not adult.
This means both Ned and Dewey must battle women to find their rock ‘n roll; and
Ned’s triumphant moment over Patty is him screaming at her to “shut up”. It’s an
ugly moment.
The show itself does throw in two lines of feminist
commentary (two whole lines), perhaps as a way to balance out the sexism
inherent in the rest of the script. But I’m not sure if I give book author
Julian Fellowes that much credit here.
The show goes to great lengths to point out that The Man
(who Dewey and the kids are sticking it to) can also be a woman – “but the
woman would only get paid 70 cents on the dollar”, the girls of Horace Green
shout. It stops the show, as does a later comment about gender representation
in media discourse, but neither time feels genuine to the school girls’
characters.
The missing mothers from the student’s home life montage added
to my sense that the show was so focused on venerating man-child Dewey and his
battle against nagging women that women’s voices were being silenced or ignored.
Comments on Mama Cass’ weight and a spit-take by Dewey into a female teacher’s
face were just gross.
The low-point was a “stolen” non-consensual kiss by Dewey
with Roz after which she jokes about giving “permission” – she’s really talking
about consent to a field trip, not the kiss.
School of Rock seems
like a feel-good show for kids and families, but this underlying suspicion of
women not letting boys be boys was troubling.
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| Amy Lehpamer as Principal Rosalind Mullins in School of Rock |
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