Review: Rock Of Ages, Grand Opera House, York, definitely back on until Saturday

Review: Rock Of Ages, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york

THIS is the third time in less than five years that the frankly daft, self-mocking musical Rock Of Ages has time-travelled back to the Eighties at the Grand Opera House, and this is the cheesiest and indeed cheekiest version yet.

Once more, courtesy of Chris D'Arienzo's tongue-in-both-cheeks book and Ethan Popp's OTT arrangements and orchestrations, you can glory in the excesses of 1980s' poodle rock: We Built This City, Here I Go Again, The Final Countdown, Don't Stop Believin'; you know the guilty pleasure type.

American AOR radio hits in extremis, piled high as the hair to accompany the satirical tale of rock demigod Stacee Jaxx (here played with relish by Antony Costa on night release from boy band Blue, and now altogether bluer).

Stacee's ego has outgrown his band Arsenal and he is giving them the kiss-off with one last basement gig at the Bourbon Room. This Los Angeles joint on Sunset Strip, run by the laissez-faire dude Dennis Dupree (a groovy Kevin Kennedy, far removed from Curly Watts days on Corrie) is alas under threat of closure from joyless German developer Hertz Klinemann (Vas Constanti) and his rebellious son Franz (Andrew Carthy).

This is but one storyline in D'Arienzo's Broadway jukebox musical, whose path is steered by Lucas Rush's show-stealing Lonny Bartlet, a narrator cum "dramatic conjuror" who guides cast and audience alike with the meddling, giddy glee of a hippier version of Shakespeare's Puck, introducing and debunking characters and breaking down theatre's fourth wall at will.

Luke Walsh has a spectacular voice, if less visual impact, in the never-easy straight-man role of wannabe rock star/songwriter Wolfgang/Bourbon Room loo cleaner Drew Boley. Will his personable but never assertive Drew ever have a matching confidence in his pursuit of Jodie Steele's Sherrie Christian, a naive wannabe "actress" newly moved to LA from the Mid West to chase the Hollywood dream, but who ends up in a cubicle with Stacee and a job as a stripper?

Steele is the very essence of director/choreographer Nick Winston's lewd and loud amd somewhat explicit production going further than before in showing, how shall we put this, more ass and not a lot of class. How very Eighties, when sexism and hedonism in rock and Hollywood were very much alive. You would find more darkness in other depictions of this exploitative era, but York's first-night audience lapped it up.

Even Rhiannon Chesterman's initially no-nonsense Save The Strip campaigner Regina Koontz succumbs to the show's daftness, much like Brad and Janet in The Rocky Horror Show. Zoe Birkett, meanwhile, parades soul power as strip-club madame Justice Charlier.

Liam Holmes's band are a rocktastic ensemble, and if you enjoy shows full of cheek and big dollops of fun, despite a few ifs amid all the butts, Rock Of Ages is for you.

Charles Hutchinson