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ROCK OF AGES Live Review | Alex & Jim Pugh Theater, Dr. Phillips Center, Orlando | Rockin’ till October 9, 2016! Get Tix!

by • September 29, 2016

I’ve learned to approach most facets of my unhurried life with few expectations. Most promising jobs end up a bit like clocking into some version of prison each day, cells conveniently switched out for cubicles. The best lovers amount to big over-the-top beginnings and tepid endings. Sometimes you’re on top of that proverbial mountain and beating your Tarzan chest, inevitably moving towards spending a day (or a week, or a month) feeling relatively useless.

But let’s get back to the point, because there certainly is one. Go at life in a big way. Push fear aside and clamber towards sweet possibility. When you don’t expect something in return, when you give and hope and even wonder more than all else, it amounts to some fairly rich rewards, occasionally more than you know what to do with. And when I walked into TheatreWorks’s Central FL premiere of Rock of Ages, I didn’t know what I was in for, but that was sort of the point, wasn’t it? Like Trump refusing to prep for the most important debate of his presidential reality show, I was boldly going into some uncharted territory and hoping it’d shake out a-okay.

In short, it did. I didn’t know I’d hear some of my favorite songs sung (and incredibly well). I didn’t know their narrator would amount to a human made of the bounciest silly putty ever, with a mullet-of-a-wig on top, singing, Gumby-dancing, and forcing us to laugh harder than we ever expected we might. I didn’t know it’d be a tribute concert one moment and a strip club the next. I also didn’t know you could take two classic rock songs and smash them into a mashup of a duet, but they did so at least twice. What I didn’t know didn’t hurt me a single a bit. It meant good, even great things by the time we walked out, happily surprised by how good we felt. They scratched us behind our ears and we left purring.

GET TICKETS TO ROCK OF AGES ORLANDO!

What Rock of Ages offered to their Opening Night audience was a time machine, one with Led Zeppelin posters and strategically placed bras, and rockers gyrating like some lost (better?) version of Les Misérables. Sure, we got all the hair metal they could dream up and then some (over 30+ songs in all), but it was offered through the filter of Broadway. The fact they could string a story through the songs we’d grown up with and all halfway made sense was a feat in and of itself.

Perhaps this is just a longer way of saying bravo.

I liked it. Judging by the smiles of all around me, they loved it.

It took us a little bit to catch on to what was happening at first but, as time marched steadily on, we were less stunned than ecstatic. We erupted with laughter in all the right spots. We ended up in on the joke that was so much more than a joke. All those on stage had invited us to their party in the middle of the week and allowed us to pretend it was the weekend. And hump day is as good a day as any to party too, amIright? 🙂

When the smoke from the smoke machine had cleared and we were wandering out towards the exit, my friend turned to me and commented that “This is the kind of thing that’s so good, you know you’ll end up thinking about it for a couple days after it’s over, you know?” Fortunately, and yes, this is one thing I do know.

Grab your tickets to “Orlando’s Biggest Party. Ever” at the Dr. Phillips Center through October 9, 2016.

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GET TICKETS TO ROCK OF AGES ORLANDO!

Rock of Ages Live Review 2016 by Dainon.

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