London is a lively city with plenty of restaurants, cafes, museums and theatres. On a recent trip I took my daughter to see the west-end show of School of Rock at the Gillian Lynne Theatre.

The performance began with some astounding guitar playing and singing from the cast members. The story behind it is about Dewey, a struggling musician trying to make a living by singing in a band and playing gigs a couple of times a week. Dewey is not your average worker, a little lazy to tell you the truth, so he thought life would be easy by just playing music and not paying rent, much to the annoyance of his flatmate’s girlfriend. However, the flatmate was once in the band but then decided to become a substitute teacher for the stability and to please his girlfriend. The girlfriend hates Dewey.

One day at band practice Dewey got kicked out, as they decided they didn’t want him anymore. With nowhere to go he printed posters selling himself as a solo artist and stapled them to trees, when some of the members found out they laughed. Dewey was at rock bottom with no work, no friends and not much going for him, until….
Dewey got a call from a school wanting to speak to a Mr. Schneebly who was unavailable, that the school wanted a substitute teacher and he would be paid handsomely. Dewey pretended to be Mr. Schneebly and said he could start right away. He conveniently forgot to mention this to his friend when he arrived at the apartment that evening.

On the Monday Dewey started in the school and was shown around by the Principal, he pretended to know what he was talking about in terms of school work, but in actual fact he didn’t have a clue. He began the class unable to spell Mr. Shneebly, and decided to do recess. After a while some of the kids didn’t want this laid-back style of teaching due to the fact their parents had paid a fortune for their education. A couple of days later the Principal took the kids out for music classes.

Dewey could hear the melodic sounds of music and wanted to teach his class rock music. The parents found out about this and weren’t too happy, but then Dewey convinced them what great musicians their kids were and to give them a chance at the rock music. Just when he was getting somewhere, the flatmate’s girlfriend showed up with the police at the school. Dewey did a runner and became a recluse for a while, until the school kids showed up at his door to encourage him to play in Battle of the Bands.
The music and singing are rocking in this show with some very talented performers, at the end everyone was up on their feet dancing.

Fact file: You can buy tickets on line through http://www.ticketmaster.ie

The show is closed temporarily due to Covid19