Review: High School Musical

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL’S ENERGY CHARGE CAPTIVATES

High School Musical is one of the surprising quirks of American entertainment production. Disney Channel originally produced it in 2006 as just one of its channel’s youth films without expecting much from it. However, it rose to great success at an unprecedented speed.
The following year, a sequel was made to it, and this autumn, High School Musical 3 is already coming. A musical version of the film was also made for the stage, a concert version and an ice show, all of which, along with the film’s soundtracks and DVD, have been worldwide successes. In addition to professional stages, the stage version has also been performed in several schools as student performances.
Finland’s High School Musical premiered last week at the Peacock Theatre, produced by the Helsinki City Theatre.
Here, too, the musical attracted attention at the beginning of rehearsals last December, when more than 900 enthusiastic young people came to its open auditions. As a result, however, there are very few first-timers among the almost thirty people on stage. Most of the young performers have several years of dance and/or music as a hobby and study, and some of them are clearly professionals in the field of dance or music.
This, of course, can be seen on stage. There is really nothing to complain about in the performers’ dancing and singing skills. The acting is a little more delicate, with the exception of a few professionals involved. But that doesn’t really matter, because it’s first and foremost a song and dance musical, where the spoken parts almost only serve as short flashes that tie numbers together.
What finally knocks the viewer out is the huge positive energy and enthusiasm that emanates from the stage. It even beats the very American spirit of the musical and the moral ethical message of the story, which is a little too clearly visible in itself: everyone is good and valuable just as they are, and by putting themselves on the line and breaking artificial boundaries, they achieve their goals in love as well as in their dreams.


Straightforward story and character gallery
The story of the musical is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in an American high school, in which the captain of the basketball team, Troy, and the school’s new student, the math genius Gabriella, break the school’s internal cliques by striving, at first a little accidentally, to get the main roles in the school musical. In this story, the ending is happy, the young people get both roles and each other, the team spirit between the different groups grows and the school’s star couple, twins Sharpey and Ryan, find themselves accepted as themselves
Both the story and the characters are very straightforward. However, in Marco Bjurström’s direction, the whole becomes believable within the given framework, and there is as much three-dimensionality in the characters as the text and the acting skills of the performers allow.

Peter Pihlström’s choreography is fast-paced and spectacular show dance and skillfully utilizes the performers’ special skills from cheerleading to ballet. Jarkko Valte’s costumes are casual high school students’ clothing, while also highlighting the characteristics of both groups and individual roles.
As the main couple of the premiere, Jukka Nylund and Yasmine Yamajako were radiant and really wonderfully singing. Jennie Storbacka and Samuel Harjanne made the most of their characters as Sharpey and Ryan and were tantalizing villains.
There were actually three speech-oriented roles in the performance. Antti Lang as a student announcer on the school’s central radio was absolutely insane. Maija-Liisa Peuhu even made her role as a teacher of expressive skills a little over-the-top dramatic, while Christian Sandström as the coach of the basketball team and Troy’s father was a little too matter-of-fact.