Teen spirit

Cast members of the stage version of High School Musical, which begins a run at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre on Sept. 5. (Joan Marcus/Mirvish Productions)

A high school jock with a passion for performing overcomes the disapproval of his teammates to appear in the school’s musical. That could describe the character arc of Troy Bolton, the hero of the Disney Channel’s High School Musical — or the real-life experience of Jeff Calhoun, the Tony-nominated Broadway director charged with bringing the amazingly successful TV movie to the stage.

“I identify very much with Troy,” says Calhoun, whose theatrical version of HSM makes its Canadian debut this September in Toronto. As a teenager in Pittsburgh, Calhoun was the quarterback on his high school football team, but he also had a jones for musical theatre. “Every Wednesday, I had to leave football practice 30 minutes early to go to tap-dancing class,” he recalls with a laugh. “Oh Lord, that was one long walk off the football field, I’ll tell you that.”

Calhoun remembers being razzed for not “sticking to the status quo,” although he triumphed in the end, not only directing his school’s spring musical, but also convincing his football buddies to be in the ensemble. That’s why he loves High School Musical’s upbeat, clique-busting message. “The lack of judgment that this show embraces, I think, is really refreshing,” he says.

That may, in fact, be the key to why this seemingly innocuous teen romantic comedy has become so huge. The story of Troy, the basketball captain who discovers both a love for singing and a love for Gabriella, the brainy new student who shares his vocal prowess, has been thrilling kids and bedeviling adults ever since the original movie made its record-breaking Disney Channel debut in January 2006. In the 18 months since then, the HSM phenomenon has moved with blinding speed, spitting out a top-selling soundtrack, DVDs, a concert tour, books, a video game, the stage production and an ice show. It’s the Disney machine operating at full throttle, capitalizing on a modest product it had no idea would become a massive hit.

Nor is there any sign of a letup. The TV-movie sequel, High School Musical 2, broke U.S. basic-cable records when it premiered Aug. 17,  attracting some 17.2-million viewers — more than double the first movie’s viewership of 7.7 million. In Canada, the sequel brought an unprecedented one million viewers to the Family Channel.

The stage show, meanwhile, has been packing U.S. theatres with hordes of squealing tweens, leaving even Calhoun flabbergasted. “How do you explain a phenomenon?” says the 46-year-old director. “How do you explain the success of the Beatles? When our house lights go to half, the theatre erupts as if they were going to see the Beatles.”

Basketball captain Troy (John Jeffrey Martin) and the studious Gabriella (Arielle Jacobs) discover their love for singing in High School Musical. (Joan Marcus/Mirvish Productions)

What they’re seeing, however, is more like a mash-up of Grease, Romeo and Juliet and American Idol. Sophomores Troy and Gabriella, having discovered their mutual love of singing, dare to leave their rival cliques and audition for the coming musical, causing chaos at status-conscious East High. As their concerned best friends, Chad and Taylor, try to bring them to their senses, the school’s undisputed drama diva, Sharpay, plots to ruin their chances at being cast in the show. At the same time, Troy and Gabriella’s revelation inspires other students to confess their secret obsessions, from an intellectual who’s into hip hop to an athlete who digs baking.

Heartwarming and idealistic, with just the tiniest pinch of teen angst, it’s a benign vision of high school that makes Sweet Valley High look like The Outsiders. And it doesn’t hurt that it has a musical score stuffed with catchy, Idol-friendly songs, from romantic duets (Start of Something New), to power pop ballads (When There Was Me & You), to rousing ensemble numbers like Stick to the Status Quo and the pep-rally finale, We’re All In This Together.

Calhoun appreciates the comparison with Grease, having directed the 1990s Broadway revival of that durable rock ’n’ roll musical. But he thinks High School Musical’s cheerful ode to nonconformity is a better role model. “In Grease, the message is: you have to be a greaser to be cool. Sandy [the heroine] has to lose her real self to become cool. And at this show, there’s a wonderful message that you can just be yourself and that’s cool enough; whether you’re Troy the basketball star, or the brainiac like Gabriella, it’s OK to be whatever you are. It’s a wonderful message.”

Calhoun says HSM’s stage version is more than just a live copy of the movie. Two songs have been added to the score and David Simpatico’s libretto fleshes out some of the characters and makes a few improvements. Notably, Ms. Darbus, East High’s eccentric drama teacher, is no longer a comic foil to the kids. “We had a chance to rethink her,” Calhoun says. “She’s the brunt of a lot of jokes in the first film, but for a show that celebrates musical theatre, I think Disney felt like they wanted us laughing with her, not at her. Now she’s a hero to the kids. All of us who are doing [theatre] for a living had someone like a Ms. Darbus in our lives that we admire.”

Actor Zac Efron, who originated the role of Troy in the Disney Channel's High School Musical, won a 2007 Teen Choice Award for his performance in the sequel. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

The production stars Broadway actor-singer John Jeffrey Martin as Troy and stage and film actor Arielle Jacobs as Gabrielle, re-creating the roles originated by Zac Efron and Vanessa Anne Hudgens in the film. They’re joined by Broadway vets Ron Bohmer as Coach Bolton, Troy’s dad and the school’s basketball coach, and Ellen Harvey as Ms. Darbus. Chandra Lee Schwartz — like Martin, an alumnus of the Broadway cast of Hairspray — co-stars in the Ashley Tisdale-originated role of the scheming Sharpay.

Calhoun got involved with the show shortly after choreographing the Tony-winning Grey Gardens last season. When he was asked to direct HSM’s first professional stage production for Theater of the Stars in Atlanta, he was bemused. “I had never heard of it,” he admits. “When they said, ‘Would you direct High School Musical?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t direct high school musicals.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no, that’s the name of the show.’ I had to call my niece to find out about its popularity.”

That production opened this past January and was a big hit. “The next thing I knew, all the people from Disney were flying in on their private jets from the West Coast and New York to see it, ” he says. A week later, they had a full-scale road show in the works. The tour previewed in Detroit and Philadelphia and had its official premiere in Chicago this month. “I’ve never seen a show get rolled out this quickly,” Calhoun says. “The speed in which it happened was really shocking. But it’s not based on animation, and it’s not one of those Disney shows that relies on spectacle, like Lion King or Little Mermaid. We’re dealing with real people in a high school, which is something we could design and accommodate quickly.”

Calhoun is now Disney’s go-to guy for HSM productions internationally. He’s just finished rehearsing three casts in the ice-show version, for two separate tours in North America and a third in South America and Europe. Next up, he’ll be directing the theatrical version again, first in the U.K. and then in Spain.

“I guess Disney wants to strike while the iron is hot,” Calhoun says. “One thing that we don’t know is what is the shelf life of this show? Is it going to be the next Grease, or is it just going to be a shooting star? But I have to say, judging by the numbers that the second movie attracted, it’s not going anywhere soon.”

High School Musical plays at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, Sept. 5-23.

Martin Morrow writes about arts for CBCNews.ca.

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