Afternoon:
14°c
The Evening Standard demands an end to the practice of burying children and babies in mass paupers’ graves
More...
It’s Day’s night, and no one is going to spoil her story
A Sentimental Journey
Film
This is a shocking, replenishing film, not to be missed
Green Zone
Restaurants
It is great that Bruno Loubet is back — and at prices that are eminently fair
Bistro Bruno Loubet
The action and direction are superb and the acting good, but the plot is so pathetic it defies belief
Wonderful - beautifully acted and gloriously funny, particularly Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw
Probably the most important photography exhibition london has ever seen
London,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Description: Children can recreate their favourite scenes and moves from the hit fiim.
Theatrical: Letitia Dean as Ms Darbus, the drama teacher at East High
There can't have been shrieking like it since the height of Beatlemania. At the very least, you'd imagine the Pope and Nelson Mandela had joined forces with Girls Aloud.
But no, it's the London premiere of Disney's tween-age 2006 television movie phenomenon that has been seen by approximately a gazillion kids worldwide.
It's Grease without the sex and subtext, a charmingly chaste delight, and it's here for the summer in all its perky, peppy and every other energy-packedadjective glory. Adult eardrums will die slow, painful deaths.
I must confess that I enjoyed the film more but that might be because I actually heard it. Here, the yelling starts the moment the action does, and should any HSM virgin have braved the fray, she'll have to try to decipher the story of Romeo and Juliet, sorry, Troy and Gabriella.
He's a jock, she's a geek: it must be fate. They're schoolmates at the delightfully earnest East High, where the biggest social problem is that the scholastic decathlon (keep up, we're in America now), basketball championship match and auditions for the, well, high school musical all take place on the same afternoon.
A production this size on a stage this big was always going to struggle to match the film's moments of real - if you're nine - pathos, so director Jeff Calhoun wisely opts for unremitting bounce.
The off- the- octane scale choreography involves much flinging about of highlighted tresses and the scenes, alternating between locker room and cafeteria, pass by in a blur as pert young cheerleaders in the shortest of shorts haul banks of furniture about. Gabriella (sweet-voiced Claire-Marie Hall) barely comes up to the muscled shoulder of Troy (bland Mark Evans) but compensates in charisma for what she lacks in centimetres.
The finale, with the anthem "We're All in This Together", is so rousing that if it were hooked up to the National Grid we'd never need fossil fuels again. As thrilling and empty a theatrical sugar rush as the biggest bumper bag of sweeties ever.
Until 31 August (0844 847 2397, www.HSMonstage.co.uk).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
All credit due to everyone concerned with High School. The choreography is spot on, the production is fab. Well done to you all it is a blast.
Mrs Darbus was fab as were Troy Gabriella Ryan and Sharpay. Lets not forget the ensemble and how about all back stage people, we must also congratulate the female swings and the male swings, they have such a responsibility remembering all the moves and positions on stage just incase they have to go on at the drop of a hat in order to cover anyone of the cast. It is obviously one of the most popular films for children, no wonder the musical has been such a success. It seems as though it will go on for a long time to come, how about Broadway?
- Jacqui Harris, swansea wales
