OBSERVER: High School Musical
A tape of Grease standing on a desk was a deft nod to the origins of the story behind Disney’s High School Musical.
Troy (Gabriel Tiller) and Gabrielle (Sophia Kouknas) met during the holidays but must now overcome the tribal partisanship of the school they attend to realise their true identities.
The energy and intensity, especially of the choreography (Callum Marshall and Issy Fox), was perhaps the hallmark of this production with the verve of the cast being foremost.
Kouknas’s voice had a texture and warmth not necessarily matched by some of the other leads but the ensemble vocals were attended to with gusto.
What stood out were the character roles with Chelsea Plumley playing up to her role as drama teacher with an appropriate extravagance and Josh Gates equally adept with the physicality of his role as Ryan Evans.
Harry Gill’s set was suitably simple with access points for a brisk change of trucks to change scenes on an open stage, and rostrum allowing the director, James Terry, to create a little variety and dimension.
Curiously, the audience were an equal component of the experience, many having dressed up as East High basketballers for the occasion.
They were the ones that had been raised on a diet of Disney films of the same title and were avoiding growing older.
This is a comfortable genre for many to indulge in, there being a certainty regarding the outcome and the character’s one expects to meet in a high school setting. The reference to the coming production of ‘Juliet and Romeo’ for which they were auditioning is a tell-tale sign of more current trends in theatre.
Review by David McLean
Pictured: Ensemble, High School Musical.
Photo: Ben Fon, Matthew Chen