Roseville’s High School Musical: The Musical

Last Thursday, Roseville High School Theater had its opening premiere for their spring musical: High School Musical: The Musical, and it was definitely a fun night.

The musical basically followed the plot of the original High School Musical movie from 2006, but just on a stage of course, which worked fairly well since most of the movie was set on a stage too. 

First off I just wanna say something about the actors, they were just great. They all seemed like they wanted to be there and everybody played their roles incredibly well, and, (most of,) everyone could sing pretty well. One thing I loved was Troy’s (Kyle Schmitt,) and Chad’s (Lucas Coppedge,) dynamic in the musical, together they were incredibly funny together and wholesome near the end, as well as Troy and Gabriella, (Maddy Anderson,) they had really good chemistry and weren’t awkward for the audience.

And more on the actors, Sharpay, (Eva Aliva) and Ryan, (Easton Rabe) were absolutely incredible as the antagonists of the musical, (I think they are but it’s however you interpret it I guess,) the two were spot on for their roles and really just did an amazing job helping the storyline go along, as well as building tension and some comedy here and there.

I also loved how the story was paced. It introduced us to our characters simply, with no over explanation, and it built a plot on top of that. It wasn’t super fast, but not intensely slow. It kept things simple. And what I really wasn’t expecting was for the musical to be actually funny, with some good timing on jokes and just good chemistry.

Now let’s get into some of the problems, which I’m gonna be nice about because, of course, it’s a production full of kids and it sho uldn’t be taken as seriously as like a broadway play for example. The tech problems were a complete mess, which I understand because it was their first performance, but like for example Kenean Patridge’s character had a short solo in the second act of the musical, but his mic didn’t even turn on, so you couldn’t hear anything he said, just lips moving. It’s not your fault Kenden, it’s just bad luck I guess, you did a great job otherwise. These mic problems happened constantly throughout the play, which I hope they fix for the future shows, as well as some other few audio and light errors, but again, everyone makes mistakes.

Overall I really enjoyed the musical, although it was incredibly cliche and cringy, but as I’ve said before these are kids, so what are you gonna do. The original movie wasn’t even super good, so  you can’t expect them to do better than the source material. If I had to rate it I’d give it a seven out of ten, because at times it made me wanna die but also it was extremely fun because at the end of the day, it’s just a goofy school musical production that they really tried at, and I can definitely tell. I can tell they didn’t have a huge budget, which I feel they deserved more.

If you haven’t yet seen it, definitely do so. The musical is showing again this week on Thursday, Friday, & Saturday at 7:00PM, with the B cast.