I was reading my twitter stream one day and noticed an odd hastag running around amongst the Melbourne folk #hsmos. After seeing a couple of them and being in possession of an enquiring mind I had to check it out.
Turned out it was a reference to High School Musical On Stage and our local theatre group the Altona City Theatre was doing a production of it the weekend approaching.
Knowing it would be fun, we had been to see another of their productions a couple of years ago, and knowing that Nikki and Ben were fans of High School Musical the movie we organise a catch up and to attend the show.
It didn’t disappoint. While the sound was a little in and out at times the performance was energetic. It had some glitz and a whole lotta local community theatre to it.
I love watching folks do what they love, and that is no more evident that in community theatre. The actors don’t get paid and most of them work full-time and well you know they are doing it purely for the love of it.
The outstanding performance of the show was one of the ensemble cast members. His rendition of an earthworm was just the most hilarious thing I have seen in a very long time. It had the whole audience curled up in their seats with laughter. Not a bad effort in a scene when practically the whole cast is on stage and dialogue is going on in the foreground.
The only actual complaint I have is about the sound being a little too low in the dialogue scenes and the lead female’s mic cutting out on occasion. One suggestion I would have for the male lead is to stand up straight. The guy was pretty tall and his co-cast much shorter, particularly the lead female so he was obviously hunching to feel more part of the crew. However, playing the part of Troy in High School Musical called for him to stand tall and proud (for the most part).
I’m thinking licensing on this one was strict. There were no live musicians and when I took the shot below I was finger wiggled from both sides of the auditorium. Disney likes to protect its franchises I guess.
So in summary, the performances were great, the sets were great. There was no live music which was disappointing, but didn’t take away too much from the show.
