Rock Of Ages (Tour-Bristol Hippodrome)

Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit proved to be the death knell of the late 80’s Glam Metal scene; over-night the grittier sound of Grunge came to dominate the rock airwaves and the success of L.A’s ‘Hair Metal‘ metal – whose ethos was summed up neatly by Poison’s ‘Nothin’ But a Good Time – came to an abrupt end. Rock of Ages is a 1980’s period piece recreating a time when dudes looked like ladies and egos were as over-sized as the arenas the bands filled. The production managed to evoke the time perfectly and huge credit must be given to the show’s costume and design team for re-creating time and place so effectively.

With its slightly flimsy plot Rock of Ages isn’t an in-depth study of the 80’s L.A music scene but rather it seems to channel the frivolous spirit of the time to produce a light-weight but incredibly fun evening out. The production didn’t start off too promisingly with the two parallel plots – a boy meets girl love story and greedy developers looking to clean up & take the rock n roll out of Sunset Strip – feeling like two completely different shows. The cast did their best to inject some energy into proceedings but for the first 30 minutes or so things didn’t seem to gel. I think the fault lay with the script which seemed to build the show from the lyrics of popular songs – which didn’t always fit the show’s narrative – rather than being used to compliment the narrative.

Towards the end of the first half though things started to really to come together and the actors seemed to relax fully into the roles and by the start of the second half not only everyone on stage but the entire audience seemed to having enormous fun. The cast were uniformly excellent and really threw themselves into proceedings with gutso and by the end everyone was on their feet singing along unashamedly to Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’.

So if you’re after ‘Nothin’But a Good Time‘ then catch Rock of Ages if you get the chance.