Melbourne has scored another Broadway coup with the announcement that Rock of Ages is coming to Australia.
At a function this morning at The Comedy Theatre the Minister for Tourism and Major Events Tim Holding and Australian producer Rodney Rigby made the announcement that the show will open in Melbourne in April, 2011.“Melbourne is fast becoming the next stop after Broadway and the West End,” the Minister said in announcing the show.
The hit Broadway musical was conceived and created US producer Carl Levin who told Undercover.com.au that prior to Rock Of Ages he had never worked on a show before. “I’ve been with the project since it was an idea in my head 5 years ago”, he tells Undercover. “Both my business partner Matt Weaver and myself have never produced theatre before. We made a lot of mistakes. We had a cast of 50 people which in theatre is pretty big when you are starting off. Now we have 25”.
In Rock of Ages, the audience becomes part of the show. “The show begins in a bar in Los Angeles on the Sunset Strip. The set is a physical bar,” he says. “They pour drinks around you while the show is taking place”.
What started off as a small LA show soon grew to a major Broadway production. “We kept getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “The audience reaction was overwhelming. We had lines around the block with people trying to get in. We moved from 99 seats to 799 to 1000, so we decided to bring it to New York and test it out on the East Coast. That was a year and a half ago.”
The show is set in 1987 and there is significance to the year. “I think for us we went into capture a time that was a little more innocent,” he told Undercover. “The last years of the 80s was a time when if you a had a decent amount of hair and some talent you could come to Los Angeles and be discovered. It was the peak before grunge and hip-hop and just when the power ballads were on their way out. We wanted to capture that moment in time when it was about big hair and big dreams and the music was soaring. If you listen to the music of 1984, ‘85 and ‘86 there was a vibrancy that the music of the 90s had lost. It wasn’t depressing or downtrodden”.
The show also attracts a wide audience. “We are noticing kids who are 15 or 16 who are into Guitar Hero or Rock Band and play these songs at home come along because it is new music to them but people in the 40s also come along with their kids who are teenagers and share the music together”.
Rock of Ages has been nominated for Five Tony Awards in 2009.
