Stage Review: Talented performers tackle stale 'Camp Rock' tale

Photo by Christopher Neely

Tierinii Jackson and Chris Hanford (center) are featured in "Disney's Camp Rock" at Circuit Playhouse.

Dear Disney Channel,

Please come up with some new ideas.

We were impressed a few years ago when you convinced millions of kids that having artistic talent was at least as cool as having basketball skills. As a former drama geek, I watched “Disney’s High School Musical” and thought I’d never live to see the day when being a singer-dancer in high school was considered respectable.

Then you followed up with “High School Musical 2” and “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” written strictly to feed the cult of Zack Efron.

Would you have music at all on your channel if not to promote cookie-cutter celebrities such as the Cheetah Girls, Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana?

Now the folks at Circuit Playhouse are putting on your “Disney’s Camp Rock” stage musical, derived mostly from the made-for-cable movie “Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam.”

Your singing-kids franchise is growing stale.

Here’s a suggestion to get the creative juices flowing over at Disney headquarters. Stop looking for the obvious reason for young people to sing. Look back at some of your oldies like “Summer Magic” or “Pete’s Dragon,” in which the characters sing because music is a natural form of self-expression and helps tell a story.

One doesn’t have to be a celebrity to use musical language. One doesn’t have to be a musical theater kid in high school. As is the case of “Camp Rock,” one doesn’t need to be attending a summer camp for kids yearning to be the next “American Idol.”

The immensely talented Teirinii Jackson (as Mitchie, the camp’s favorite vocalist) seems utterly underwhelmed by the banality of the “rock” music score. She could definitely handle Sondheim.

Chris Hanford does a fine impersonation of Joe Jonas (who played hottie Shane in the movie). As the show’s choreographer, he’s also turned the production into an almost non-stop aerobics display for teens. The physicality of the dances are impressive, but the script — about winning the “Final Jam” contest to save Camp Rock from closing — knits the dances together like a series of “So You Think You Can Dance” routines.

Even Amy Hanford, the director who staged the region’s first ever production of “High School Musical,” can’t make Camp Rock seem like a place where true individuality rules. You’re either a star, a back-up singer, or worse, a back-up dancer. Where are the actual musicians? The guitarists? The drummers?

It’s time for the Disney Channel’s writers to innovate — to risk making musicals that take young people to whole new worlds, as Aladdin might say, not just to the same old places they’d expect to find a bunch of wannabe singers singing about wanting to be singers.

“Disney’s Camp Rock”

Performances continue at 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 18 at Circuit Playhouse, 51 S. Cooper. Tickets are $33-$38 adults, $20 seniors and students and $15 children under 18. Call 726-4656.

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