Disney plus dance equals Merry-Go-Round’s fun High School Musical

The Disney Channel’s tween-geared franchise High School Musical has morphed into a sweet cottage industry for the Mouse House, especially with its popular floorboards version that took America’s stages soon after the 2006 debut of the original TV-movie.

The show itself feels like an Ike-era time capsule, with its abundance of squeaky-clean family values and a soft-rock score churned out by a platoon of pop songwriters. Indeed, if there was a 1959 version of High School Musical, Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello would have surely played the starry-eyed leads.

Meegan Midkiff

So the folks mounting the current production of High School Musical at Auburn’s Merry-Go-Round Playhouse already know that it’s far, far away from a lasting musical-theater monument, but that drawback doesn’t stop them from having a good time. Chances are that the audience also already knows where the show’s plot, a generous mix of cliques and cliches, is headed. 

During a five-day span at East High School, mathlete Gabriella Montez (Alyssa Herrera) and hoops dreamer Troy Bolton (Michael Parker Ayers) discover their hitherto unknown gifts for carrying a tune and acting up a storm. Alas, the callbacks for a Shakespeare revamp named Juliet and Romeo take place at the same time as Troy’s crucial basketball game and Gabriella’s participation in a science showdown with her fellow students. Can these kids find room for their respective artistic muses, not to mention consummating their own chaste romantic yearnings for each other?

A “fun fact” listed in Merry-Go-Round’s playbill states that High School Musical was initially conceived as Grease 3 back in 1999, with then-starlets Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake considered for the main roles. Since the Disneyfication of Grease’s much beloved rock’n’roll spoof would have been deemed heresy, it’s just as well that the eventual project would be anointed with the more generic title High School Musical. People forget, however, that the 1978 movie version of Grease with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John was also homogenized for mass consumption; the stage show has much more randy gusto. 

In contrast, High School Musical is deliberately inoffensive and un-edgy, a safe harbor for youngsters in the audience who sing along with the play’s characters, while adults in tow understand that the show’s backdrop is strictly Neverland. (No King of Pop references intended.) So the book adaptation by David Simpatico poses a real challenge for director Kate Swan, in which she strives to make the characters sympathetic without resorting to cornball emotions, while ensuring that the tongue-in-cheek moments of humor never lapse into nudge-your-ribs parody.

Swan’s central casting calls, thankfully, ring true. Michael Parker Ayers, a gangly dirty blond, makes for an appealing Troy, whether he’s spooning with Gabriella, or sparring with his basketball coach (T.J. Mannix, sporting lots of heart-of-gold gruffness), who also happens to be Troy’s dad. Alyssa Herrera supplies a winning performance as Gabriella, a brains-and-beauty character who never ventures into nerd territory.   

Of course, various types of geekiness lurk on the perimeter, such as bespectacled budding playwright Kelsi (Arin Lee Dandes in an enthusiastic turn) and public-address announcer Jack Scott (Sam Underwood in a role not found in the TV-movie), who bills himself as “the velvet fog of East High” for all you Mel Torme fans out there. The school’s drama coach, Ms. Darbus, kicks in some goofy sports malapropisms like “football diamond,” with the spot-on timing of actress Rachel Black accentuating her character’s laugh lines. And Meegan Midkiff steals scenes galore as drama-queen diva Sharpay Evans, accompanied by Marshal Kennedy Carolan as Sharpay’s fey twin brother Ryan.  

A key difference between the TV-movie and stage version rests with the ways in which musicals have been dumbed down by Hollywood. In the film media, every musical number must now include jarring, fragmented edits and needless close-ups to simulate visual movement, instead of letting the camera merely capture the high-stepping action. Needless to say, the dance elements in Auburn’s production consistently outshine the Disney Channel’s boob-tube hoofers, with Merry-Go-Round choreographer Lori Leshner letting her cast’s happy feet do the talking, especially in the full-scale cafeteria hoedown “Stick to the Status Quo.” 

High School Musical’s revved-up retro vibes already make the show feel like its own revival, yet if it lures those tweens in the MGR audience to sample other honest-to-goodness musicals down the road (the company opens No, No, Nanette on July 22), then everybody wins.

This production runs through July 18. See Times Table for information.