Sharing is caring!

School of Rock – absolutely awesome – an inspiration to young musicians!

My eldest has just has a few weeks left of his Primary School education before moving to ‘big’ school so when we were offered tickets to see School of Rock at the Liverpool Empire I jumped at them – surely this was “educational” and he could cope with a late night I thought … little did I know!

Before I get into the show, I should set the scene; I LOVE musicals, the rest of my family not so much!  I took both boys to see The Addams Family and although they enjoyed it they weren’t raving about it.  I’d asked if Freddie fancied this and was pleased when he said “yes”.  He has dabbled with the electric guitar over the last few years but isn’t really committed to it.

The story follows the film in that Dewy needs a job and ‘lands’ one as a substitute teacher at a private elementary school where rather than following any syllabus, and once he realises his students have musical talent, decides to teach them how to be in a rock band in order to enter the “Battle of the Bands” competition.  As you would expect from a collaboration of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Julian Fellowes it’s well put together and an easy watch.

The casts is very well cast – Jake Sharp is a superb version of Jack Black from the film and had the audience laughing, “eeuugghhh-ing” and  “whooping” in equal measure.  The real talent are the students – these are a bunch of talented kids!  If you want to inspire young musicians this is the place to bring them!   All instruments played on stage are actually played by these young people.  I feel I need to repeat that because, as my husband will tell you (he got invited onto this very stage a few weeks ago during the Derren Brown show) it’s nerve-wracking just being on stage let alone performing, singing, dancing and playing instruments.  All of them were superb, but Tomika needs  a mention – her voice was phenomenal!

Enough about what I thought, I’ll hand over to Freddie for his opinion.

“I loved it!  It was very funny with some great songs.  My favourite was “Stick it to the man”.  I thought the stage was great too – they changed it so many times to make it completely different.  I would highly recommend going to see it!” 

Freddie age 11

Regarding age guidance I think the shows says 8+, I would agree with this.  The majority of the content is aimed at children with a few jokes thrown in that would go over their heads!  There were a few mild swear words which worked in their context.  I would say it’s a great show for the whole family and I’m really hoping it inspires Freddie to pick up his guitar again!

Readers local to Liverpool may have heard we did have a slight interruption; the whole theatre was evacuated just two songs from the end of Act I, we were outside for 40 minutes then gradually let back in where they resumed the performance at the start of Act II.  Liverpool Empire Theatre explained the following day “that the evacuation was the result of a faulty fire alarm sensor”.  It’s always better to be safe, which everyone quite understood and although it meant the performance finished late … it was most definitely worth it!

School of Rock is showing at the Liverpool Empire Theatre until Saturday 9^th July for tickets: To book : You can get tickets here

For more information on the UK please visit: https://uktour.schoolofrockthemusical.com/