By the end of this week, almost 90 Dubai and Abu Dhabi kids and teenagers will have completed the UAE's first summer band camp.
Thankfully, with temperatures outside approaching melting point, the musical holiday park in question has been indoors, namely at the First Group Theatre at Madinat Jumeirah. Following on the heavily worn heels of High School Musical and Fame, Disney's Camp Rock: The Musical closes this Saturday after a week of performances that have given some of the UAE's young starlets an opportunity to shine on stage.
And shine they most certainly did, at a performance on Tuesday night. And whoop and clap and sing and dance.
Based on Disney's Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, this screen-to- stage adaptation is an impressive show. And it's not purely for the performances, but for the fact that - aside from four members - almost the entire cast is made up locally based children and teenagers, and comes after just two weeks of rehearsals following auditions in May. The story is typical Disney fodder: children return to the Camp Rock holiday park for a summer of music and friendship. Much singing and dancing. Camp Star, the flashy rival music park on the other side of the lake, opens. Much singing and dancing.
Camp Star's ruthless owner Axel Turner entices Camp Rock staff over with promises of better salaries and air-conditioned cabins (an understandable deal-breaker). Much singing and dancing.
Camp Rock's charismatic head girl Mitchie decides that the only way to beat Camp Star is via a musical showdown (if only this could be the case for every dispute). A great deal of singing and dancing.
Running alongside the main plotline are splashes of innocent teenage romance, some all-out silliness, and even a few performances by the fictitious global supergroup Connect 3 (played by The Jonas Brothers in the film version).
Mitchie (played by Jo Shah) and the lead boy Shane (Liam Doyle) are the Vanessa Hudgens/Zac Efron-esque couple and are among the few to have flown over from the UK (Liam actually won a UK television contest to play Efron's role in a performance of High School Musical).
And while these two do much of the solo singing, the other main cast members are equally stand-out. Arguably the best performance comes from 16-year-old Rosie Napper, who plays the spoiled, self-absorbed singer Tess Tyler (her character flaws are underlined early on by her excessively pink attire and heels), while 14-year-old Annie Halloran does brilliantly as the daughter of the Camp Star head honcho Axel Turner, particularly in a scene in which she faces some extremely awkward teenage boy chat (or lack of it).
But it's difficult not to ignore the rest, all 85 of them (at a quick head count), from tiny 10-year-olds to towering teenagers, who regularly descend upon the stage for hands-in-the-air dancing and singing sessions. Despite the numbers, the choreography is almost flawless and the singing marred only by very occasional issues with volume levels.
While obviously a treat for proud parents, the show's target audience made up most of the crowd and whooped and laughed at all the right moments. There were also moments of unrehearsed audience participation. In the second half of Tuesday night's evening show, a distressed Shane yelled out that nobody cared that he was a rock star, at which point a shriek came from the front row which sounded almost like "I do!".
It was perhaps a shame that the cast had to adopt American accents throughout (one unexpected comedy moment came as one member accidentally slipped into very-British English mid-sentence), and it would have been nice if the musicians actually played their instruments on stage instead of pretending. But these are minor faults, ones that could perhaps be ironed out in the next band camp, or whichever show-stopping teenage musical next comes to town.
• Disney's Camp Rock: The Musical is showing until July 16 at the First Group Theatre, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, with performances at 2.30pm and 7.30pm. Book online at www.madinattheatre.com
