Rock out with your schlock out!

If power chords be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of head banging.

Even if Rock of Ages has about as much to do with Shakespeare as hairspray does to musical taste, this hard-rocking jukebox musical is a whole lot more awesome than Hamlet. Okay, maybe not, but I'm certain there are people who think so. Hamlet might have been a whole lot less moody if he had been able to jam to "Sister Christian" or "Cum on Feel the Noize."

You don't go to Rock of Ages for high art. You go to move your head vigorously to an irrisistible beat – as if you had a full head of '80s rocker hair – and you may even feel compelled to perform some air drums and, God help you, air guitar. The Broadway touring company now on stage at the Curran Theatre as part of the Best of Broadway series makes Mama Mia! look like Long Day's Journey Into Night.

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Dammit, Janet. Let's rock!

Janet Billig Rich would like you to cum on and feel the noize. And girls? Why don’t you rock your boys. And maybe we’ll all get wild, wild, wild.Billig Rich extends the above invitation as a bona fide rocker, as a Long Island native and, most importantly, as one of two dozen producers of the surprise Broadway smash Rock of Ages.The most successful juke-box musical this side of Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages takes guilty-pleasure rock songs from 1980s hair bands like Journey, Night Ranger, Twisted Sister, Whitesnake and Poison, and turns them into a funny, feel-good slice of musical theater nostalgia. The touring production of this Tony-nominated Broadway hit rocks and rolls into San Francisco’s Curran Theatre March as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway series.

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