School rocks when it rolls onto stage

By PETER SMITH

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 28, 2000

Singing songs about adverbs, when they're good songs, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Just ask the cast of Schoolhouse Rock Live, playing through May 14 at American Stage. They will tell you and sing for you and dance for you and make adverbs the most lovely things in the world to care (and sing) about.

And why not? The original TV show Schoolhouse Rock was written by some of America's best songwriters, including Lynn Ahrens, Bob Dorough and David Frishberg, and the songs were so infectious, so well-written that if you were a child from 1973 to 1986, the phrase "Conjunction Junction" is almost certainly followed by "What's your function?" Or when you think about a law being passed, you probably hum, "I'm just a bill."

Both these songs as well as a double handful of others are featured in Schoolhouse Rock Live. Six delightful, energetic performers are on stage throughout the evening, and their sheer pleasure in performing could charm the birds from the trees.

Becca McCoy can sing a touching song about migrating to America and play a rhinoceros with equal aplomb, while Jason Quinn has the stance and awareness of a great vaudevillian.

Libby Snyder and Ryan McCarthy seem to be the youngest members of the cast, and their childlike performances do not fail to delight. Ami Salles Corley and Brian Shea are the most "adult" (a relative term) of the cast. Corley is a funny actor, joyfully uninhibited, while Shea, who plays the story's center, gets to hang his jaw in delight at the others and also please himself.

While there are no great singers here, they fit the complicated wordy material well and make it seem simple just by loving it so much. Their pleasure in these songs (after all, about parts of speech) is infectious. Everyone gets a solo, but it is as a group that they shine.

To call this "children's theater" might keep you away from it, and that would be a mistake. It is children's theater in the same way that the Harry Potter books are children's literature. There is never a sense of being talked down to, always a straight-ahead look at everything, from adjectives to manifest destiny.

There is a reason everyone in a certain age group knows these songs, and it isn't just because they were wired on Cocoa Puffs when they first heard them. These songs both assume we know something and want us to know more. Who treats you like that these days? Hardly anybody. You noticed?

Can't keep adverbs and adjectives straight? (Who can?) You may as well enjoy learning about it.

School House Rock Live, through May 14 at American Stage, 211 Third St. S, St. Petersburg. Curtain: 7 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Tickets: $15 adult, $7 for ages 12 and under. (727) 823-7529.