Classic 80s hits rock the house in the Rock of Ages tenth anniversary tour

Jeremy Daniel

Are you ready to rock … again? The hit jukebox musical Rock of Ages is taking to the road once again to celebrate its tenth anniversary asking the question, ‘Are you ready to have your face melted off?’

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Rock of Ages uses Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and Dupree’s Bourbon Room as the backdrop for its plot. Drew Boley works at the Bourbon Room but has aspirations to be a rocker. Sherrie Christian, recently arrived from Kansas with aspirations to become an actress, has her purse snatched and Drew helps her get a job at the club. But nefarious German developers, Hertz Klinemann and his son Franz, pay off the mayor to bulldoze the Strip and its sex, drugs and rock-n-roll aesthetic and bring ‘cleaner living’ to the city, which drives the mayor’s assistant Regina (pronounced Reg-eye-na) to lead a revolt to stop the destruction of the Strip.

Faced with the loss of his club, Dennis Dupree believes that bringing a major concert event in would generate the revenue needed to keep things running so he books the band Arsenal, which held its first show at the Bourbon Room, to play their final concert before lead singer Stacee Jaxx leaves for a solo career. Things heat up between Drew and Sherrie until he says they’re just friends while they’re on their first date (to ease the tension but he didn’t realize how deeply that hurt Sherrie), and the next thing you know she’s having sex with Stacee in the men’s room at the club, ruining her relationship with Drew and getting fired in the process — on Stacee’s recommendation, telling Dennis she brings a toxic energy to the room. Will the Bourbon Room be saved by the end of the show, and will Drew and Sherrie really know what love is?

If you’ve only ever seen the movie version of Rock of Ages, you haven’t seen Rock of Ages. The movie adds new characters and erases several others while shuffling, adding and removing a lot of the show’s 80s soundtrack. In fact, the entire gentrification of the Sunset Strip storyline is gone, replaced by right wing zealotry trying to get the club shut down. Several other plot lines are changed as well, particularly when it comes to Sherrie getting a new job at the Venus Club and her actions with Stacee (i.e. she never has sex with him in the movie). So the movie can call itself Rock of Ages but it really bears very little resemblance to the stage show. It’s pretty much a mess whereas the show is absolutely charming, especially with the show’s narrator Lonny constantly breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly, and at one point even reminding the actors that they are in a show. It really makes the audience participants in the goings-on, and when the famous songs are performed, many in the audience sing along with the cast. It really is a communal experience seeing Rock of Ages live.

Jeremy Daniel

The tenth anniversary tour is filled with a terrific cast. Anthony Nuccio is perfect as Drew (aka Wolfgang Von Colt), bringing a goofy innocence to the character and an impressively powerful, rocker’s voice (and just wait till you get to the part where he holds a note for a minute). A terrific performance all around. Katie Lamark is also very good as Sherrie, and even when she becomes a bit tarnished by the Hollywood dream, she still retains that innocence she brought from Kansas. Sam Harvey, in one of the show’s better 80s wigs (some of the guys’ mullet wigs look straight out of Party City), looks like he stepped out of a 1980s hair band music video. He actually doesn’t have as much to do in the show as the character did in the movie (but he was played by Tom Cruise, so …) but he makes an impression each time he’s on stage. Kenya Hamilton stops the show every time she sings once she takes to the stage as Justice, owner of the Venus Club. Really, all I can say about her voice is ‘Wow!’ Kristina Walz (Regina), Andrew Tebo (Hertz) and Chris Renalds (Franz) all get little moments to shine, but Renalds really steals the show with his rendition of ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’. My only issue with the Klinemann’s is that sometimes their Hogan’s Heroes inspired German accents are a little too over-the-top to the point of being barely intelligible. Ryan M. Hunt also does a nice job as Dennis and he gets his own little moment in the spotlight in Act II that may come as a surprise (well, there are two surprises as far as Dennis is concerned).

Jeremy Daniel

But the real star of the show is Lonny, played by John-Michael Breen. Lonny the narrator sees and knows all, he’s there to fill in some gaps and give us some exposition, all with a wink in his eye and a witty aside or two. Breen pulls it all off masterfully, and with a great voice to boot, but he really manages to pull us in, and rip off the artifice of the show without taking us out of the show’s story. At one point Lonny flat out tells Drew he’s just an actor reciting lines that someone wrote, but then gets right back into character and we continue to root for Drew and Sherrie to make their relationship work. It’s a tricky tightrope act to not make it all come off as incredibly cheesy and Breen never once loses his balance. He really is the glue that holds the entire show together.

The production is also handled very cleverly. The main set remains stationary throughout the show but there are different set pieces that are rolled on and off stage that appear to be made from those black shipping crates you usually see at rock concerts. These pieces include everything from the interior of an airplane to a car that Drew and Sherrie ride around in (not the mention the infamous Bourbon Room men’s room). The lighting is used to good effect, especially when the cast is rocking out, giving a real rock concert feel, and the music is handled by a world class band on stage that plays those 80s hits to perfection.

Having only seen the movie, I really didn’t know what to expect from the show. I thought it might be just a goofy mess, but I was dead wrong. The central love story is nothing new, but the characters (and actors) are so charming you can’t help buy root for them. And you get invested in the fate of the club (and Regina and her protesters) as well. And even if you’re not really a fan of the 80s hair band music, the music is all familiar and used to good effect, used in service to the story and not the other way around. Rock of Ages is a joyful experience from start to finish, and by the end you will definitely be ready to rock.

Rock of Ages is currently on tour across the US and Canada.